Minister wants door-to-door hunt in Molenbeek
KAC suspends Beirut flights
Kuwait Airways yesterday said it was suspending its Beirut flights “as a precautionary measure”, but most other flights were arriving and leaving normally, after Moscow requested airlines avoid an area over the eastern Mediterranean. In a precautionary measure taken to ensure passengers’ safety, Kuwait Airways cancelled four flights to and from Beirut over the past two days. The decision was made due to the state of confusion prevailing in Beirut after Russia asked Lebanon’s Civil Aviation authority to divert all civilian flight routes because it planned to conduct drills and maneuvers in the Mediterranean.
Lebanese Transport Minister Ghazi Zeaiter said Moscow asked “that planes leaving Beirut airport towards the west avoid overflying an area in Mediterranean territorial waters because of maneuvers on Saturday, Sunday and Monday”. There was no confirmation from Moscow, but a Lebanese airport official said departing flights would be directed south over Sidon and Sarafand to “keep them away from the perimeter of the maneuvers”.
Lebanon’s national carrier Middle East Airlines said most of its flights would be on schedule but “some flights to the Gulf and the Middle East region might take (a) longer time due to a slight change in airways”.
Brussels was on terror lockdown yesterday in fear of a Paris-style attack, with a gunman wanted over the deadly rampage in the French capital a week ago still on the run. The Belgian capital closed its metro system and shuttered shops and public buildings as a terror alert was raised to its highest level over reports of an “imminent threat” of a gun and bomb attack similar to the horror seen in Paris. Investigators are working around the clock to track Brussels resident Salah Abdeslam, one of the gunmen still on the loose after a coordinated wave of attacks on Parisian nightspots that left 130 people dead on Nov 13.
Belgium-based jihadists are increasingly at the heart of the Paris investigation and police have multiplied raids in the city’s immigrant districts in a rush to stop a repeat of Islamic State-inspired attacks that have killed hundreds around the world in recent weeks. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said authorities feared a “Paris-style” assault “with explosives and weapons at several locations” as he urged citizens to limit their movements.
The carnage in Paris has put all of Europe on edge amid fears that IS extremists can move operatives freely among target countries in an abuse of the EU’s open-border Schengen zone system. In Turkey, police arrested a Belgian of Moroccan origin in connection with the Paris attacks in the resort of Antalya, the site of this week’s G20 summit, along with two other suspects, probably Syrians. Ahmet Dahmani, 26, is accused of helping to scout the Paris attacks and then preparing to illegally cross the Turkish-Syrian border to rejoin IS after arriving in Turkey from Amsterdam on his Belgian passport.
Soldiers were on guard in parts of Brussels, including at the institutions of the European Union headquartered in the city. Brussels is also home to the headquarters of NATO. “The result of relatively precise information pointed to the risk of an attack along the lines of what took take place in Paris,” Michel told a news conference yesterday. “We are talking about the threat that several individuals with arms and explosives would launch an attack perhaps in several locations at the same time,” Michel said. He declined to elaborate, but said the government would review the situation today afternoon.
The crisis centre said weekend games in Belgium’s two professional divisions should now be postponed, but most outside Brussels appeared set to go ahead. The metro system is to remain closed until then, in line with recommendation of the government’s crisis center. Major shopping centers and stores did open yesterday morning, with soldiers deployed outside shops. However, many began closing their doors from around midday.
The crisis center advised the public to avoid places where a lot of people come, such as shopping centers, concerts, sports events or public transport hubs. The city’s museums were shut and concert venues cancelled planned evening events. The agency has called on local authorities to cancel large events and postpone soccer matches, as well as stepping up the military and police presence. Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said that 1,000 troops were now available for patrols, double the level of a week earlier.
The alert level for all of Belgium was raised following the Paris attacks to level three out of four, implying a “possible or probable” threat. Previously, only certain sites, such as the US embassy, were at level three. Belgium, and its capital in particular, have been at the heart of investigations into the Paris attacks - which included suicide bombers targeting a France-Germany football match - after the links to Brussels emerged. Three people detained in Brussels are facing terrorism charges. Federal prosecutors said yesterday that weapons had been found at the home of a person charged on Friday.
France has been shaken to its core by a dramatic week which began with the attacks and saw a violent shootout on Wednesday between police and jihadists holed up in a Paris apartment. Suspected attack ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud was killed in the police assault along with his cousin Hasna Aitboulahcen and an unidentified suicide bomber. French police yesterday released seven people arrested during the raid, but kept hold of Jawad Bendaoud, who has admitted lending the apartment to two people from Belgium “as a favor”.
Abaaoud was a notorious Belgian jihadist thought to be fighting in Syria and his presence in Europe raised troubling questions about a breakdown in intelligence and border security. The European Union agreed Friday to rush through reforms to the passport-free Schengen zone by the end of the year as France extended a ban on public gatherings until Nov 30 and the start of a UN climate summit.
Seven attackers were killed or blew themselves up during their assault on Paris. Belgian-born Salah Abdeslam, 26, is believed to have fled to Belgium and a huge manhunt is under way to find him. Abdeslam, whose brother Brahim blew himself up outside a Paris bar, may be equipped with a suicide belt, according to Hamza Attou, one of two suspects charged by Belgian authorities for allegedly helping Abdeslam return to Belgium after the attacks. Attou’s lawyer Carine Couquelet told French TV channel LCI that her client has described Abdeslam as very nervous on the journey. “There are many possible theories: was (Salah) a logistical support, was he supposed to blow himself up? Was he not able to do it? We don’t know.”
Abdeslam, who was from the same Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek as Abaaoud and is said by officials to have known Abaaoud in prison, was pulled over three times by French police but not arrested as he was driven back to Brussels early last Saturday by two of the men now in custody. As well as Abdeslam’s brother, a second man from Molenbeek, Bilal Hadfi, was also among the Paris suicide bombers. Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon told reporters he wanted a register of everyone living in Molenbeek because it was not clear at present who was there, with authorities conducting door-to-door checks of every house. “The local administration should knock on every door and ask who really lives there,” Jambon said. — Agencies