Fear of terror attack lingers on in Belgium
Police detain 16 suspects in raids across Brussels
BRUSSELS — Belgian security forces made more than a dozen arrests in a series of raids across the capital on Sunday night as they hunted down suspected Islamic State militants, but said sweeping security measures would be kept in place as the major suspect from the Paris attacks remained at large.
Prosecutors said 16 people had been apprehended during 22 house raids amid fears that allies of the Islamic State may be planning a similar attack in Brussels. Police opened fire during one raid after a vehicle sped at them.
Belgian officials decided on Sunday to extend a partial lockdown of the city through Monday, keeping the capital on its maximum terrorism alert level. Besides the metro train system, schools will also be shut.
Prime Minister Charles Michel said that authorities had received “additional information” on Sunday that had led to his decision to enforce the extraordinary measures.
“We fear an attack like the attack in Paris,” he said in a news conference. “Meaning several individuals conducting an attack in Brussels, possibly in several places at the same time.”
Not since Boston came to a near standstill after the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 has the life of a major Western city been brought to a halt this way by the fear of terrorism.
Police in France released a photo Sunday night of an unidentified attacker, one of three who blew themselves up at Stade de France on Nov. 13. The man is suspected of having traveled on a fake Syrian passport through Greece on Oct. 3. Police are asking people who might recognize the face in the photo to contact them.
The possibility that one or more of the Paris attackers may have arrived among the waves of refugees from the Middle East has intensified debate in the United States as well as Europe over their welcome in the West.
Belgian officials are casting a wide net for those involved in the Paris attacks and others who may be preparing to strike in Belgium. A primary target is Salah Abdeslam, a 26-yearold French national who is the subject of a manhunt across Europe. Abdeslam, who was identified as one of at least nine suspected attackers, is believed to have made his way to Belgium after the attacks.
Abdeslam was not among those arrested on Sunday night, Belgian prosecutors said.
During a raid near a snack bar in Molenbeek, the largely immigrant area of Brussels that several of the Paris attackers called home, police fired two shots after a car rushed at them. The car escaped but was later stopped by police, and the wounded driver was arrested.
Several of the Paris attackers had lived in Brussels, including Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the plot’s orchestrator who was killed Wednesday in a standoff with French police.
Western leaders stepped up their rhetoric against the Islamic State group, which has claimed responsibility for the attacks in Paris that killed 130 people; the suicide bombings in Beirut that killed 43; and the downing of the Russian jetliner carrying 224 people in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. All were recent events.
“We will not accept the idea that terrorist assaults on restaurants and theaters and hotels are the new normal or that we are powerless to stop them,” President Barack Obama said in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
At one point the president seemed to dismiss the radical group as “a bunch of killers with good social media” as he was asked to explain to Americans how they should view the security threat it poses.
In addition to the military action and intelligence gathering, “the most powerful tool that we have to fight ISIL is to say that we’re not afraid,” Obama said, using an alternate term for Islamic State.
French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said the Islamic State must be destroyed at all costs.
“We must annihilate Islamic State worldwide … and we must destroy Islamic State on its own territory,” Le Drian said. “That’s the only possible direction.”
On Saturday, authorities in the Turkish coastal city of Antalya detained a 26-yearold Belgian citizen suspected of being linked to Islamic extremists and possibly to the Paris attacks.
France, which has extended a state of emergency for three months and a ban on demonstrations and other gatherings through Nov. 30, has intensified its aerial bombing campaign in Syria.