PARIS — The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack on Saturday against two police officers in Charleroi, Belgium, according to a statement issued on Sunday by the group’s Amaq News Agency. Advertisement Continue reading the main storyThe federal prosecutor’s office identified the attacker as a 33-year-old Algerian who had been living in Belgium since 2012. France and Belgium are still on heightened alert after a network of Islamic State militants carried out attacks in November in Paris and in March in Brussels, killing a total of 162 people. A string of attacks this summer has also stoked fears about security, including one that killed 85 people in Nice, France, on July 14 and that the Islamic State also claimed. The statement called the assailant a “soldier of the Islamic State” who had carried out the attack “in response to calls to target citizens of countries belonging to the crusader coalition,” a reference to nations involved in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

Source: New York Times August 07, 2016 15:52 UTC