Alert lifted at U.S. embassy in Brussels after police check suspect vehicles

The area around the U.S. embassy in Brussels and the Belgian defense ministry was temporarily sealed off as bomb squad assessed a suspicious vehicle.

A bomb squad moved in with a specialized robot and an expert in a bomb suit before the area was declared safe for traffic again. The alert was lifted Wednesday afternoon and traffic started moving again around the two buildings.

Earlier in the day, Belgian Defence Ministry spokesman Didier De Weerdt said several buildings had been evacuated between the embassy and the ministry as well as several of the main routes through the district and out of the city, Reuters reports.

"I can confirm we have been evacuaed. There was a suspect vehicle," said Viktor Sidabras, the spokesman for the U.S. mission to the European Union. He said both the mission and the U.S. bilateral embassy to Belgium had been evacuated.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.