Police sappers (archive)
Police sappers (archive)Israel news photo: Flash 90

Buildings were evacuated and sappers were called to check out two suspected car bombs near the U.S. Embassy in Brussels on Wednesday.

The two suspected vehicles both contained gas bottles, according to a Belgian Defense Ministry spokesperson.

"As far as I know, there are two suspect vehicles, one close to the American Embassy, and one close to the Belgian Defense Ministry,” said Didier De Weerdt, ministry spokesperson.

"Apparently there are gas bottles inside the vehicles.”

Suspicions were first raised when someone spotted a wrongly-parked vehicle, said Joren Vandeweyer, a spokesperson for the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Both the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) maintain their headquarters in the Belgian capital. Main arteries in and out of the city center were blocked off by police, as well as several of the main roads throughout the central district.

Two days ago, a suicide car bomber drove straight into a U.S. Consulate vehicle in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar. Two U.S. personnel and two Pakistani staffers at the Consulate were injured in the blast, which killed two people and wounded 19 others.