Michel said that the committee responsible for assessing the level of threat would sit again on Sunday morning and the government would review its measures on Sunday afternoon.
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The Brussels metro was closed for the whole day, although buses continued to run, and officials recommended that all assemblies be called off, although a few football match organisers insisted that they would go ahead.
Belgium raised its terror alert level to the highest level in the capital Brussels on Saturday, warning of an “imminent threat” in a statement from the OCAM national crisis center.
Belgium has raised its terror alert to the highest level in the capital Brussels.
The Belgian Federal Prosecutor’s office says several weapons were discovered during the search of the home of one of three people arrested in Belgium in connection with the Paris attacks.
Five of the terrorists who perpetrated the Paris attacks, claimed by the Islamic State terror group, had links to France and Belgium, including the mastermind of the attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian of Moroccan origin who lived in Molenbeek, a Brussels district known to be a hotbed of jihadism and Islamic radicalism. Seven of them were questioned after six raids around Brussels related to Bilal Hadfi, one of the men who blew himself up outside the Stade de France. It’s a shocking sight for a country that hasn’t seen much violence since World War II ended and proves that we are now engaged in World War III: a war that’s fought in every country, and in which it’s sometimes hard if not impossible to distinguish friends from enemies.
Brussels is home to the headquarters of the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation alliance and the offices of many American and foreign companies.
The French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said the new measures, which require obligatory, systematic and coordinated checks on all travellers entering the 26-nation zone, would be introduced immediately, with the European commission expected to formalise the new rules by the end of the year.
According to people in the city, soldiers are now on guard and patrolling certain neighborhoods. At that time, Jewish schools, synagogues and other institutions were put on level four.
Another suspected member of the commando, Salah Abdeslam, a 26-year-old Frenchman living in Brussels, is the subject of an worldwide manhunt. He was extradited to the United States in 2013.
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Brussels was placed on the top level “four” in the government’s threat scale on Saturday after a meeting of top ministers, police and security services.
