“What we fear is an attack similar to what happened in Paris, with multiple individuals, maybe even that strike in several locations at the same time”, said Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, noting that authorities were “particularly attentive” to the public transport system.
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As we’ve reported, the Belgian capital has been essentially shut down since Saturday, after authorities said they received “concrete information” of a terrorist plot.
“Apart from the closed metro and schools, life goes on in Brussels”, Belgian interior minister Jan Jambon told RTL Radio on Monday. “For the metro it could be in a progressive way”, he said.
In Brussels, the unnamed fourth suspect was charged late Monday with “participating in activities of a terrorist group and with terrorist attack (Paris)”, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
Federal prosecutor Eric Van Der Sypt said 19 raids were carried out Sunday in Molenbeek, home to numerous Paris attackers, and other boroughs of Brussels, and three raids were carried out in Charleroi.
Two of five people detained on Monday were also released.
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attacks in Paris that killed 130 people and wounded hundreds more; the suicide bombings in Beirut that killed 43 people and injured more than 200; and the downing of the Russian plane carrying 224 people in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
The web of fear from the Paris attacks has spread across Europe, especially to Belgium where some of the assailants had lived before the violence.
Shortly before midnight, the public broadcaster, announcing several arrests, said the operations had concluded and the mayor of a Brussels borough that is the focus of a manhunt for a key suspect in the Paris attacks said shots had been exchanged.
Abdeslam’s elder brother Ibrahim blew himself up outside a Paris bar in the 13 November attacks.
In the evening, a raid was carried out on Islamic State’s Syrian stronghold of Raqqa, where the French armed forces said planes destroyed several facilities including a command centre.
Belgian police have already arrested 16 people in raids linked to the “terrorist threat” facing Brussels, bringing the total number of arrests during the operation to 21. While Abdeslam remains at large, more than 20 people have been arrested across Belgium for possible connections to the violence.
“I firmly support the action president Hollande has taken to strike ISIL in Syria”, Mr Cameron said after talks in Paris on Monday, using another acronym for IS.
One person was wounded, he added.
He will hold talks with US President Barack Obama in Washington on Tuesday, before meeting Germany’s Angela Merkel on Wednesday and Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Thursday.
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Over the weekend, the police requested that residents refrain from posting details of the raids on social media and potentially tipping the suspects off in the process.
