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Brussels bomb alert turns out to be false alarm: reports

Xinhua, July 21, 2016 Adjust font size:

A police operation that lasted five hours in Brussels' city center on Wednesday turned out to be a false alarm, according to local media reports.

The police launched an operation after being alerted of a suspicious man near the Place de la Monnaie in the center of the Belgian capital. The man was wearing a heavy winter coat with protruding wires in a temperature of nearly 30 degrees Celsius, according to Belgian Newspaper La Libre.

After hours of intense operations, the man was found out to be a student of nuclear radiation at a university in Brussels. He was researching radiation and radioactivity in the city.

The man is now arrested and taken by the police for hearing.

The operation had resulted in the blockade of a large swathe of blocks, and the evacuation of several shops around Place de la Monnaie.

Special forces and the bomb disposal unit were also called in to assist the operation.

"The way he reacted was totally abnormal, which is why we had to use all these means," Christian De Coninck of Brussels police told Belgian broadcaster RTBF.

The incident came one day ahead of Belgium's National Day, with heightened security in Brussels in the wake of Nice attacks which killed at least 84 people.

Earlier this year, Brussels was struck by three coordinated suicide bombings, which killed at least 32 civilians. Endit