The shooting, which took place while Sweden’s national football team was in the city to play Belgium, prompted authorities to raise the terror alert level there to four. 

The Foreign Office has advised British visitors to avoid the area and follow the advice of local authorities. It added that Britons should avoid all non-essential travel, and stressed this was "a developing situation". 

According to reports in Belgian local media, police in Brussels shot a man in a cafe in the Schaerbeek region of the city following a manhunt. Belgium prosecutors confirmed the incident, but didn’t confirm whether the man was the gunman, according to the BBC.

It comes just a few days after France raised its national threat level following the fatal stabbing of a French teacher in Arras, northern France. 

This threat level is described as "maximum vigilance and protection in the event of an imminent threat of a terrorist act or in the immediate aftermath of an attack". 

Dominique Bernard was killed by a 20-year-old man in an attack that President Emmanuel Macron condemned as “barbaric Islamic terrorism”.