Soccer cancelled, shops and tubes shut... Belgium grinds to a halt
BRUSSELS went into lockdown yesterday over the ‘imminent threat’ of another Paris-style terrorist atrocity.
Unprecedented security saw shops and public transport closed, sporting events cancelled and people urged to stay indoors as heavily armed soldiers and police patrolled the streets of the Belgian capital.
The country’s prime minister, Charles Michel, raised the terror alert level to the maximum ‘Level Four’ after fears of a ‘serious and imminent’ terror threat involving ‘weapons and explosives’.
The decision was taken because of ‘quite precise information about the risk of an attack like the one that happened in Paris’, Mr Michel said, referring to the massacre of 130 people eight days before.
The fear was that ‘several individuals with arms and explosives could launch an attack … perhaps even in several places’, Mr Michel said.
Belgium’s interior minister Jan Jambon told reporters as he arrived for a special security cabinet meeting yesterday: ‘The situation is serious, otherwise we would not go to Level Four, but the situation is under control.’
The terror alert came as authorities across Europe tried to determine how a network of primarily French and Belgian terrorists carried out the deadly attacks in Paris.
The Brussels subway system was suspended until further notice ‘by order of the police’, as the authorities warned people to avoid busy areas including train stations and the airport. The Foreign Office warned Britons in city, home to the European Parliament and the HQ of Nato, to avoid large gatherings, while the US Embassy in Belgium urged Americans ‘to shelter in place and remain at home’.
In streets which would normally be bustling in the run-up to Christmas, more than half the shops were closed, with more closing early throughout the day.
The mayor of Brussels requested that any cafes and restaurants which had remained open close at 6pm. Speaking through a half-closed shutter at a travel agent in the capital, one employee told The Mail on Sunday: ‘We are scared. We have never seen soldiers like this out on the streets. It is safer to stay closed.’
But some tourists and locals bravely defied the threat by carrying on as normal. Evelyn Sdoukou, a 29-year-old lawyer visiting from Athens, said she and her friends, Eirimi Diamantopoulou, 39, and Matima Diamantopoulou, 30, would not let their holiday be ruined by terrorists.
‘You cannot let the terrorists win,’ she said, adding: ‘We have not changed our plans.
‘It is weird to see so many soldiers on the streets, but it is better as if something were to happen, they are ready.’