Yesterday, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said Brussels was placed on its highest level of terror alert in response to information about the risk of an attack like the one in Paris last week.
Advertisement
Its government has cancelled large public events, closed the Brussels metro, postponed sports events, urged people to avoid large crowds and stepped up military and police presence. A top tier soccer game that was due to be played 50 miles outside the capital was canceled because of the need for police inside the city.
The Belgian capital was locked-down for a second day Sunday with police and troops on the streets as the authorities said they were searching for “several suspects” linked to the bloody attacks in Paris.
As the worldwide manhunt for 26-year-old Belgian Salah Abdeslam continued, patrons of a gay bar in Brussels told The Sunday Times of London that he was a regular there – known for boozing, smoking hash and flirting with other men. That alert had shut down Brussels’ subway and was based on a “serious and immediate threat”, the Interior Ministry said.
Salah Abdeslam is suspected of being one of the Paris attacks gunmen.
Chemicals and explosives were among the items found in the Molenbeek suburb, a rundown neighborhood where Paris attacker Abdelhamid Abaaoud was suspected of operating a terrorist cell.
According to Le Soir newspaper, investigators are looking for at least two men, one of whom is thought to be carrying a bomb similar to that used in the Paris suicide attacks.
The LTA has been taking advice from the Foreign Office, which on Saturday issued new guidance for Britons visiting Belgium, advising against visiting places where there is a high concentration of people.
Four people also remain in custody in Belgium itself on suspicion of involvement in the attacks, which have cost 130 people their lives.
The Belgian citizen, who is of Moroccan descent, is accused of carrying out reconnaissance for the attack in Paris, the Dogan news agency said.
“It also suggests they don’t have a handle on it, that they don’t know where these plotters are or where they’re coming from”, he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin today said that he wanted global cooperation to combat terrorism in the wake of an Islamist militant attack on a luxury hotel in Mali that killed 19 people including six Russians.
Advertisement
“Security is the first of all freedoms”, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Thursday. Russian Federation has offered to send Dobrynya to France in a gesture of solidarity after Diesel the police dog was killed during a raid in Saint Denis, north of Paris.
