Belgium cancels NYE celebrations
ANKARA—Brussels has scrapped New Year’s Eve celebrations due to terrorism fears as Europe prepared to see in 2016 under tight security, while police detained two Islamic State (IS) suspects in Turkey over a plot to attack Ankara.
Belgian authorities said a firework display and festivities to welcome the New Year that drew 100,000 people last year would not go ahead after revealing an alleged jihadist plan to attack the capital during the holiday.
The decision came the day after two people were arrested on suspicion of preparing attacks on “emblematic sites” in Brussels during the celebrations, and after another man was questioned over links to last month’s Paris attacks.
“Unfortunately we have been forced to cancel the fireworks and all that was planned for tomorrow (on Thursday) evening,” Mayor Yvan Mayeur told Belgian broadcaster RTBF. “It’s better not to take any risks.”
In Paris, where 130 people were killed by Islamists on Nov. 13, the annual fireworks display on the Champs-Élysées has been called off, and 11,000 police, soldiers and firefighters will patrol the French capital.
Moscow’s Red Square, traditionally a place where people gather to ring in the New Year, will be closed to revelers on Dec. 31, while Vienna has also beefed up security ahead of the celebrations.
In Turkey, meanwhile, officials said two IS suspects, reportedly both Turks, were planning to stage suicide bombings in the center of the capital Ankara, which is expected to be packed with revelers on the night of Dec. 31.
Turkey has been on a high security alert since October, when two suicide bombers blew themselves up in a crowd of peace activists in Ankara, killing 103 people in the worst attack in the country’s modern history.
According to the private NTV television, counterterrorism police arrested the pair in the Mamak district on the outskirts of the capital, which is home to more than five million people.
“They are suspected of being affiliated with the Islamic State and were planning an attack on the New Year in Ankara,” a Turkish official told Agence France-Presse (AFP), asking not to be named.
The two were planning to stage an attack in Ankara’s main Kizilay square, the Anatolia news agency reported, citing the prosecutor’s office.
The governor’s office said the suspects, identified as “M.C.” and “A.Y.,” had planned to strike two spots in Kizilay—one outside a big shopping mall and the second in a street packed with pubs.
Police also confiscated one suicide bomb vest, one bomb mechanism with ball bearings and one rucksack with bombmaking materials, the governor’s office said.
The alleged plot comes after a clampdown by police on suspected Islamists, including this month’s arrest of an alleged member of the IS group suspected of planning a suicide attack on the US consulate in Istanbul.