Belgian soldiers and police patrolling in central Brussels yesterday.
Reuters
Brussels
Belgium said it faced a serious and imminent threat of a Paris-style attack, and kept Brussels on maximum alert today as security forces searched for militants thought to be at large in the capital.
Prime Minister Charles Michel, speaking after a meeting of security chiefs called to review the threat status, said the capital’s metro, universities and schools would be closed today.
For the rest of the country, a threat level of three on a four-tier scale would remain in place, Michel said. Brussels would remain at level four, meaning an attack was imminent, as it has been since Saturday.
“What we fear is an attack similar to the one in Paris, with several individuals who could possibly launch several attacks at the same time in multiple locations,” Michel told a news conference.
Possible targets were malls, shopping streets and public transport, Michel said, adding the government would boost police and army presence in the capital beyond already high levels.
Belgium has been at the heart of investigations into the Paris attacks on November 13 that left 130 people dead after links with Brussels emerged.
In France, investigators yesterday extended into a fifth day the detention of a man arrested on Wednesday outside the building where the suspected ringleader of the Paris attacks died in a raid. Police also released a picture of a man they said had blown himself up in the attacks and called for witnesses.
Two of the Paris suicide bombers, Brahim Abdeslam and Bilal Hadfi, had been living in Belgium. Fugitive suspected militant Salah Abdeslam, Brahim’s 26-year-old brother, slipped back home to Brussels from Paris shortly after the attacks.
Earlier, Interior Minister Jan Jambon said Salah Abdeslam was not the only security threat.
“It is a threat that goes beyond just that one person,” he said. “We’re looking at more things, that’s why we’ve put in place such a concentration of resources.”
Bernard Clerfayt, the mayor of the Brussels district of Schaerbeek, was quoted by broadcaster RTBF as saying there were “two terrorists” in the Brussels area ready to carry out violence.
Mohamed Abdeslam, the brother of Brahim and Salah, urged Salah in an interview on RTBF television to give himself up, adding that he believed Salah was still alive because he had had a last-minute change of heart while in Paris.
Fears over chemical attack
French police are investigating the recent theft of medical protective clothing from a hospital in Paris. The motive for the theft is unclear but it comes amid heightened fears in France over the risk of biological or chemical terrorism following the deadly November 13 attacks in Paris. The disappearance of a “limited number” of “protective clothing elements” from the Necker hospital was discovered on November 18, said an official statement. After the November 13 attacks, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said France could face the risk of chemical or bacterial warfare in its fight against Islamist militants.
The Necker hospital is used by patients possibly suffering from the Ebola virus and as such has a large stock of protective clothing.
