Three people have been found dead in an active drug lab in the town of Poederlee near Lille in Antwerp, close to the border with the Netherlands, the Antwerp Public Prosecutor confirmed on Wednesday.
A fourth victim was resuscitated and taken to hospital. An investigation has been launched, the Prosecutor's Office confirmed to Belga News Agency.
The Prosecutor's Office provisionally qualified the case as "the creation of psychotropic substances in association, resulting in death." The identity of the victims has not yet been released, and the exact cause of death is not yet known.
In addition to the police, the fire and emergency medical services were also called to the scene, as was the judicial lab, the medical examiner and the police's Clan Lab Response Unit (CRU), as is the usual procedure in the case of a drug lab.
The building where the bodies were found had been empty for several months. Before that, it housed a liquor store, VRT reports.
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This is not the first time that deaths have occurred in a drug lab in Belgium; a few years ago, three people were also found dead in a building in Hechtel-Eksel (Limburg province). At the time, it transpired that the victims had died from the toxic fumes released during the production of the synthetic drugs.
Drug labs are often dismantled in the border region with the Netherlands.
