Little question regarding an article. Is it correct to call it incident when it was an “attack”? I’m not a native speaker but I don’t know if in English you call this “incident”. In Italian “incident” is something happened with no intention

I can't speak for Belgium, but it's pretty common police/journalistspeak in Canada when reporting about *apparent* crimes, ie ones where the details are incomplete or unconfirmed.  responsible journalists are cautious.  they use words like "incident" in order not to lead the public to ~~false~~ premature conclusions.  

Incident just means something that happened in English. It is a bit detached from blame but it's more of a journalistic choice to use unbiased/non-emotive language than incorrect.

Thank you to everyone for the replies :)

Are you confusing “accident” with “incident”?

Incident is used just to mean an event, usually in a negative sense. “I’ve not seen you since the event” sounds like it was a party or something positive. “I’ve not seen you since the incident” sounds like there was a fight or something negative. But incidental (adjective) and incidentally (adverb) mean that there is no connection. I suspect that the “incidence” in coincidence comes from the same root too.

Incident does not have the Italian meaning. The closest word with that meaning (something that happened with no intention) is *accident*.

“Accident” is the word you’re thinking of, meaning something that happened with no intention behind it. Like a traffic accident.

It is common for the English language not to make sense.

Literally anything that happens can be called an “incident;” incident just means a thing that has happened. “Event” is pretty much synonymous with incident and would also be ok here, but incident seems more normal to me. (And journalists are generally careful not to characterize something as a crime before it’s been adjudicated.)

"Incident" in English means simply a situation that occurred. An "accident" is unintentional.

An incident in English can be used basically to describe any event that happened, usually a bad event. In English, a thing that happens with no intention, especially a bad event, is an accident.

It just means event. It’s a general word commonly used in such journalism 

You are 110% correct that an incident is something that happened unintentionally; however, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread; responsible journalists don’t say “attack” when talking about apparent or alleged crimes that don’t have all the information available(which is often for legal reasons).

This is correct as used.

As others have said, “incident” covers all kings of bad things. Just look at the Wikipedia page of border incidents in Korea: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_border_incidents_involving_North_and_South_Korea The range of happenings that qualify as “incidents” is breathtakingly wide: everything from a concerted attempt to assassinate the other side’s president, to playing propaganda on loudspeakers near the border.

Incident in this case just means something that happened. An attach is an incident. They use the term to be more detached, likely for legal reasons