6 detained in foiled train attack

Event was stopped by three Americans in August 2015

BRUSSELS — 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 Brussels area were searched in the operation.

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 tried to open fire with an assault rifle but was overpowered by three Americans, two of them, Alek Skarlatos and Sacramento’s Spencer Stone, off-duty members of the U.S. armed forces. The third American was Anthony Sadler.

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. Those bombings, at the Brussels airport and in the subway, killed 32 people. The November attacks at a nightclub, cafes and a stadium in Paris killed 130.