Belgium announced a counter-terrorism clampdown in the Sint-Jans-Molenbeek district of Brussels after seven people with suspected links to Friday’s attacks in Paris were arrested in the immigrant-heavy neighborhood.
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French investigators are working with Belgian authorities who carried out a series of raids after two Belgian-registered cars were discovered in Paris, both suspected of being used by attackers.
Belgian newspaper The Last Hour has reported that police are interested in three young people who may have been involved in the terrorist attack. “But we can’t make generalisations”, he said.
The Islamic State claim came as French authorities struggled to put together what took place Friday night, and security officials anxious that the network that supported, possibly numbering as many as 50, was still at large and plotting additional attacks.
“To give you an idea of the scale of the challenge, in the past two years we’ve charged more people with terrorism offenses than in the 30 years before that”, he said. Belgium’s Premier Charles Michel vowed to crack down on Molenbeek, saying, “I have noticed there is nearly always a link to Molenbeek, that there is a huge problem there”.
It is also possible Islamic State may have wanted to leave a Syrian passport behind to stoke fears about migrants in Europe.
Michel told Belgian television that the arrests were linked to “suspect vehicles” identified during the investigation by French police into the attacks that killed at least 129 people. “In our country, there are additional security measures in force”, Michel said on Twitter.
“As a precaution, a heightened awareness of the police services was requested for all big events planned at the weekend in Belgium as well as for the football match on Tuesday”, it added. “They were checked at the border between France and Belgium”.
The brothers were traced over the rental of VW Polo and one other auto, a Seat containing Kalashnikov automatic rifles that was found abandoned in the Paris suburb of Montreuil. And a Frenchman accused of shooting dead four people a year ago at the Jewish Museum in Brussels also spent time in the area. The man, born in 1985, had a criminal record and had been flagged as an extremist as early as 2010.
In the aftermath of the devastating terror attacks on Paris on Friday, the identifies of a few of the victims are slowly becoming known. So did the man overpowered by a group of passengers in August on a Paris-bound train before anyone was killed.
When police commandos finally raided the concert hall, two of the attackers were killed when they detonated their suicide vests, and the third was shot and killed by police.
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A few of that, said Nils Duquet, a researcher at the Flemish Peace Institute, dates back to before 2006 when Belgium, whose state-owned FN Herstal sidearm manufacturer supplied numerous world’s armies, also had a relaxed approach to gun ownership. One of the two was a suicide bomber, while the other helped with logistics and, among other things, rented one of the cars used in the attacks, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
