Nations mobilize against Islamists

BRUSSELS — Belgium ordered its army into the streets, and antiterror raids across western Europe netted dozens of suspects yesterday as authorities rushed to thwart more attacks by people with links to Mideast Islamic extremists.

As anxiety soared in the wake of last week’s bloody rampage in and around Paris, the broad scope of the police actions illustrated the challenges facing a continent threatened by Islamic militancy far from the battlefields of Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

Rob Wainwright, head of the police agency Europol, said that foiling such attacks by returning jihadists had become “extremely difficult” because Europe’s estimated 2,500 to 5,000 radicalized Muslims have little command structure and are increasingly sophisticated.

French, German, Belgian and Irish police had at least 30 suspects behind bars yesterday, and in Brussels, authorities said a dozen searches led to the seizure of four Kalashnikov assault rifles, handguns and explosives. Several police uniforms also were found, which Belgian authorities

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said suggested that the plotters had intended to masquerade as police officers.

The seizures followed a vast anti-terrorism sweep on Thursday in and around Brussels and the eastern industrial city of Verviers in which two suspects were killed in a firefight and a third was wounded as police closed in on their hideout. Authorities said the overnight operation netted several returnees from Islamic holy war in Syria.

Federal magistrate Eric Van der Sypt said yesterday that the