BRUSSELS (Reuters) – A 19-year-old man was shot dead in Brussels on Saturday night, the local prosecutor’s office said, as drug gang violence in the Belgian capital shows no signs of abating.
Brussels has been plagued by shootings linked to drug gangs in recent years, and officials have said that more than 100 of Europe’s most dangerous criminal networks operate in Belgium.
The prosecutor’s office said on Sunday that the shooting occurred in the Brussels district of Anderlecht. Police were hunting for the suspects who escaped in a car.
“Our initial inquiries lead us to believe that the incident occurred in the context of a settling of scores within the milieu of drugs trafficking,” it added in a statement.
Saturday night’s murder followed another fatal shooting in Anderlecht this month, while a separate shooting incident in Brussels in February resulted in a temporary shutdown of many of the capital’s metro stations.
(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
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