Brussels faces third day of lockdown amid terror fears




The city of Brussels will endure a third day under a security lockdown on Monday, after the prime minister said that the risk of a Paris-style attack remained “serious and imminent”.

Charles Michel said that the authorities had credible intelligence that several jihadis were planning an assault in the city, possibly using guns and explosives in simultaneous attacks. He announced the closure of schools and the metro system.



“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 Mr Michel, noting that authorities were “particularly attentive” to the public transport system.

Shortly after Mr Michel spoke, the authorities launched 22 raids throughout Belgium. Police sirens wailed across Brussels, armoured cars blocked streets and helicopters buzzed overhead. Nineteen raids took place in Brussels, and three in the southern city of Charleroi.

Federal prosecutors said that 16 people had been arrested. However, they added that they had not detained Salah Abdeslam, alleged to be one of the jihadis responsible for the attacks in Paris on November 13. He travelled to Brussels immediately after the killings and friends have remarked that he could still be armed with an explosive belt.

Shots were fired during a raid at a snack-bar in the deprived and predominantly Muslim quarter of Molenbeek in western Brussels. Police shot at a vehicle which sped towards them, wounding one of the occupants, although prosecutors said it was not immediately clear whether he was connected to the anti-terror inquiry.

Parts of Brussels had been rendered ghost towns over the weekend after the authorities cancelled markets, concerts and almost all sports matches to avoid a repeat of the shootings and suicide bombings that killed 130 in Paris on November 13.

In a sign of the anxious mood, crisis phone lines were overwhelmed by up to 400 calls an hour. There were false alarms over suspected bombs in the Flemish towns of Vilvoorde and Mechelen. In Brussels, armoured cars were driven into the heart of the city as soldiers joined the police in patrolling the streets. Metro stations were shut down all weekend.



“This is about several suspects. That is why we have put such a concentration of measures in place,” said Jan Jambon, the Belgian interior minister, who stressed on Sunday that the government had intelligence about a wide-ranging plot.

Security services fear that Brussels was used as the launch pad for the attacks in Paris. The country has long been identified as a security problem because of the relatively large number of young men who have left Brussels and Flanders to fight in Syria.

Public fears centre on Mr Abdeslam. His brother Mohamed appeared on state television to insist that he was calling on his brother to surrender. “We prefer to see him in prison rather than in a cemetery,” he said.

Carine Couquelet, a lawyer representing one of the men who drove back with him, said Mr Abdeslam was dropped in the northern Brussels district of Laeken early on the afternoon after the Paris attack. She said that the two other men were worried by his threatening and tense manner and feared that he was still carrying his explosive belt.




Some of Mr Abdeslam’s friends, who had spoken to him by phone since then, told the US broadcaster ABC that he felt trapped between French and Belgian authorities, on one side, and Isis on the other. The Islamist terror group was angry that he had not detonated his belt in the Paris attack.

The national Belga news agency reported that four people were arrested in a car in the Grand Sablon square by a special police unit in Brussels on Saturday.

Koen Geens, the justice minister, said that the hunt for suspects was continuing, and stressed that he knew the identities of at least some of the jihadis being sought.

At Brussels Gare du Midi railway station, police armed with rifles have been stationed at the entrance to the Eurostar check-in area, and teams of soldiers were patrolling the station concourse on Sunday.

Security staff have also erected metal barriers restricting access to the platforms for travel to Paris, Frankfurt and other destinations.

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