Belgium on alert after rogue soldier threatens virus expert

Police stepped up a manhunt Wednesday for a Belgian soldier with suspected extreme-right views and access to rocket launchers who went missing after threatening public figures -- including a renowned coronavirus expert.

Late Wednesday, the federal prosecutor's office said, some 250 police officers and soldiers deployed at a national park in the northeast where serviceman Jurgen Conings may be hiding.

The suspect's abandoned four-wheel drive vehicle was found near the park on Tuesday evening with "four anti-tank rocket launchers and some munition", the prosecutor's office said.

Conings, whose Twitter profile describes himself as a "Belgian Air Force soldier who likes fitness, body building and boxing", already figured on a list of extremists monitored by Belgium's anti-terrorist agency.

He was one of around 30 Belgian military personnel with known extremist sympathies, officials said, but he remained on active duty, training Belgian troops ahead of deployment on overseas missions.

Prime Minister Alexander de Croo told  Flemish broadcaster VTM it was "unacceptable" that the fugitive had been allowed to access the weapons, and Defence Minister Ludivine Dedonder said an inquiry would be launched.

Conings' police wanted notice shows a thick set man with a shaved head and in his Twitter profile he appears stripped to the waist, revealing an imposing physique.

A spokesman for the prosecutors, Eric Van Duyse, told AFP the soldier was "well trained but seems to have ideas associated with the extreme right".