IS flag found with dead Brussels gunman

Brussels : Belgian police found an Islamic State flag next to the body of an Algerian killed during a raid in Brussels, investigators said Wednesday as they raced to track down two suspected extremists who escaped.

The assailant has been named as Mohamed Belkaid, 35, an Algerian national living illegally in Belgium, who was killed by a police sniper while trying to fire at police from a window during a chaotic gunbattle on Tuesday.

Two suspects were still at large after the bloodshed, which erupted as Belgian and French police searched a property in connection with the November Paris massacre claimed by IS in which 130 people died.

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said authorities had decided to maintain the country's terror alert at the second-highest level of three, "which means a threat is possible and likely".

Brussels was locked down and the alert level raised to the highest of four shortly after the Paris attacks, but it was lowered back to three a few days later, although troops remain outside many key sites.