Shocking footage has emerged of a female reporter and a cameraman being harassed live on air by a young man in the troubled Molenbeek region of Belgium.

Journalist Giovanna Pancheri, working for Italian news company Sky TG24, was in the Belgian district to report on recent protests.

The video shows the camera being knocked out of focus and a young man wearing a grey hoodie and a black hat appearing in view.

He speaks to the reporter and the cameraman who try to continue with the broadcast.

The man refuses to leave and continues to stare at the camera.

Tensions in the Belgian capital have remained high in recent days with police out in force to ward off trouble after local authorities banned a planned anti-Islam rally and any counter-protests.

Several hundred people tried to gather in defiance of the ban in the troubled neighbourhood while smaller far-left groups were dispersed from a central Brussels square that has become a memorial to the March 22 victims.

Journalist Giovanna Pancheri, working for Italian news company Sky TG24, was harassed as she tried to complete a live broadcast

The young man speaks to the reporter and the cameraman who try to continue with the broadcast

Police said they briefly detained over 100 people but only two were kept in custody.

One of them was a driver who ploughed through a police line in Molenbeek, running over and injuring a female passer-by.

The authorities were determined to prevent a repeat of last weekend, when riot police fired water cannon to disperse far-right football hooligans who disrupted mourners at the makeshift shrine to the attack victims.

The video shows the camera being knocked out of focus and a young man wearing a grey hoodie and a black hat appearing in view

The man refuses to leave and continues to stare at the camera. Tensions in the Belgian capital have remained high in recent days with police out in force to ward off trouble after local authorities banned a planned anti-Islam rally and any counter-protests

Brussels has been on edge since the November 13 Paris gun and suicide bomb attacks which killed 130 people after it emerged several of the jihadists came from Brussels.

The sole surviving Paris suspect, Salah Abdeslam, was arrested in Molenbeek on March 18, after four months on the run as Europe's most wanted man.

He denies having any prior knowledge of the Brussels attacks.

Devastating suicide bombings in the Belgian airport's main terminal and a Brussels subway train killed 32 people and wounded 270.