Six detained in connection with foiled train attack

Six people were detained in connection with an attack last year on a Thalys express train to France that was foiled by three Americans, Belgian authorities said Monday.

The Federal Prosecutor’s Office said six houses in the greater Brussels area were searched in the operation and an investigating judge was to decide later whether the people taken in for questioning should remain in custody.

No arms or explosives were found and the prosecutor’s office said no further information would be made public about the people detained or the items seized in the police searches.

In August 2015, a man on a Thalys train that had just crossed into France from Belgium tried to open fire with an assault rifle but was overpowered by three Americans, two of them off-duty members of the U.S. armed forces. French police termed it an Islamic extremist attack, but the alleged gunman, Ayoub El Khazzani, maintained he wanted to commit a robbery.

French authorities have linked El Khazzani to Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the ringleader of the Islamic State cell that attacked Paris in November and Brussels in March. Brussels was on high alert Monday with increased security after another police sweep over the weekend that left three in jail facing terrorism charges, including relatives of two of the suicide bombers involved in the March attacks.