Not to jeopardize the anti-terrorist action in Brussels, the Belgian authorities no longer asked about details to report and disseminate: no Tweets!
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The pictures, videos and gifs tweeted under the hashtag #BrusselsLockdown made worldwide news.
“Seriously” is probably not the best word to use, as numerous cat memes tweeted were really cute and amusing.
The terror alert in Belgium’s capital, Brussels, raised to a maximum level of 4/4 over the weekend, meaning the chance of a terrorist attack was serious and imminent.
In a surreal display of solidarity, cat tweets flooded the #BrusselsLockdown hashtag, which had almost 155,000 mentions on Sunday night, virtually burying any intelligence about police movements.
Police have failed to find prime suspect, 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam, who has been on the run since leaving Paris following the attacks.
Belgians have reacted to the terror lockdown now in place in Brussels in the best way possible – by posting pictures of cats to Twitter. Kukulka believes the first to have the idea about the cats was Hugo Janssen, a cameraman working for the Dutch television channel NOS.
Afterwards Belgian authorities thanked the internet.
Police arrested 16 people during 22 separate raids in Brussels and Charleroi conducted on Sunday.
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Federal prosecutor Eric Van Der Sypt said police “want to thank the press and social media users because they took the need of this operation into account” and Belgium’s crisis centre tweeted: “Thanks to the media and citizens for their silence online as asked during the juridicial intervention tonight”.
