Troops have shot a person at Brussels Central Station after an explosion.

Belgian troops have shot a suspected suicide bomber in Brussels Central Station with no no other casualties and the situation brought under control, officials say.

It’s not yet been confirmed if the person had been wearing an explosive vest and whether the person shot is still alive. Paul de Vries, a Dutchman working in Brussels, told Reuters he saw police taking away a prisoner.

The station and the adjacent historic downtown area, packed with tourists and locals on a hot summer evening, was partly evacuated as police set up a security cordon, witnesses told Belgian media.

Nicolas Van Herrewegen, a station employee, told public broadcaster RTBF that he saw a man shouting in a lower level of the 1930s station, which serves lines running under the city centre.

He then appeared to yell “Allahu Akbar” in Arabic and to detonate something on a luggage trolley. People standing within three metres of the trolley were unhurt, Herrewegen said.

Authorities are investigating whether it was a terrorist incident, a spokesman for the national Crisis Centre said. The national alert level was maintained at its second highest level.

The Belgian capital, home to the headquarters of NATO and the European Union, has been on high alert since a Brussels-based Islamic State cell launched an attack that killed 130 people in Paris in November 2015. Associates of those attackers, four months later, killed 32 people in their home city, including with bombs loaded on trolleys at Brussels Airport.

Combat troops have been a fixture at transport hubs and in the main public areas ever since the Paris attacks.

Stationmaster Jean-Michel Michel was quoted by DH Newspaper saying: “We heard the explosion. My colleague thought it was a bomb. The explosion was on the mezzanine level. The man went down to platforms three and four. He said ‘Allahu Akbar’…

“I would put him at about 35 years old.”

The police spokesman said: “There was an accident at Central Station. There was an explosion around a person. That person was neutralised by the soldiers that were on the scene.”

“At the moment, the police are in numbers at the station and everything is under control.”