Belgian police killed two men who opened fire on
them during one of about a dozen raids on
Thursday against an Islamist group that federal
prosecutors said was about to launch “terrorist
attacks on a grand scale”.
The suspects were shot dead in the eastern town
of Verviers after they opened fire on police with
automatic weapons on Thursday evening.
Officials say they had returned from Syria and
planned imminent attacks on police targets.
Another suspect was wounded before being
arrested.
All three were citizens of Belgium, which has one
of the biggest concentrations of European
Islamists fighting in Syria.
Speaking after Thursday’s raid in Verviers, near
the German border, Prosecutor Eric Van Der Sypt
said the terror threat level had been raised to
three – the second highest.
Referring to the raid itself, he said:
“The suspects
immediately and for several minutes opened fire
with military weaponry and handguns on the
special units of the federal police before they
were neutralised.”
After the operation, four Kalashnikovs, bomb-
making equipment and police clothing were found,
according to local media. Security forces remain
in the Verviers area.
Police are expected to provide more details at a
briefing on Friday.
“Operations on the ground are now over. We are
now exploiting the information [from the
overnight anti-terror operations],” Belgian Foreign
Minister Didier Reynders told French TV station
iTele.
Some Jewish schools in Antwerp and Brussels
were closed on Friday, after they were informed
that they could be potential targets, Belgian
newspaper Joods Actueel reported.
Anti-terror raids also took place late on Thursday
in the capital Brussels and surrounding towns,
including Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, Anderlecht and
Schaerbeek.
Earlier that day, two suspected Islamists were
arrested in the Brussels suburb of Zaventem,
Belgian media reported.
Belgian officials say more than 300 people have
left Belgium to fight with Islamic militant groups
in Syria and Iraq.
The country is thought to have the highest
number of foreign fighters per capita in Europe
who have taken part in fighting in Syria.
Coming a week after Islamist gunmen killed 17
people in Paris, the incident fueled fears across
Europe of young Muslims returning radicalised
from Syria. But the Belgian probe had been under
way before the Jan. 7 attack on French satirical
newspaper Charlie Hebdo and officials saw no
obvious link between the two.
In recent weeks, European security services
received indications of an ominous possibility:
that ISIS may have started directing European
extremists in Syria and Iraq to launch terrorist
attacks back in their home countries, the Belgian
counterterrorism official said.
With half a million Muslims, mostly of French-
speaking North African descent, among its 11
million people, Belgium has seen similar
discontent to that in France among young,
unemployed children of immigrants in blighted,
post-industrial towns like Verviers, once a major
center for wool and other textile mills.
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