Belgium to remain on high alert following shootout with terrorists
Print Edition
BELGIAN Prime Minister Charles Michel said yesterday that the country will remain on Level Three alert, its second-highest state of security readiness, after a shootout on Tuesday during a raid linked to the Paris attacks.
“We should bear in mind that Level Three is not a normal level of threat,” Michel told a news conference.
The Belgian capital Brussels was put on the maximum Level Four for almost a week, with some public spaces locked down, after the November 13 Islamist attacks in Paris in which 130 people were killed.
Michel urged people to remain calm and assured them the security services were working to contain any threats.
Authorities earlier identified the gunman killed in a raid targeting suspects in the Paris attacks as a 35-year-old Algerian and said police had detained two others while finding an Islamic State flag at the scene.
Investigators believe much of the planning and preparation for Paris attack was conducted in Brussels by young French and Belgian nationals, some of whom fought as militants in Syria.
On Tuesday, six Belgian and French police officers arrived to search a flat in a Brussels suburb and came under a barrage of automatic weapons fire through a door from at least two people barricaded inside, injuring four officers.
A special forces sniper shot dead gunman Mohamed Belkaid when he tried to fire at police from a window, prosecutors said.
They said a Kalashnikov assault rifle and a book on Salafism, a radical branch of Islam, were lying next to Belkaid’s body, and that he had been living illegally in Belgium though was known to police only for a case of theft in 2014.
The flat in southern Brussels also contained a large cache of ammunition and an Islamic State flag, investigating prosecutor Eric Van der Sypt said.
Investigators were holding a man admitted to hospital near Brussels with a broken leg that required surgery. The person who brought him to hospital fled as local police arrived.
Another suspect was detained for questioning after a further house search near the scene of the shooting.
Both of the detainees were later released without charge, prosecutors said, meaning the hunt for suspects involved in the shootout continues.
Belgian security forces have been actively hunting suspects and associates of the militants involved in the Paris attacks.
One of the prime suspects, 26-year-old Brussels-based Frenchman Salah Abdeslam, is still on the run.
He left Paris hours after his brother blew himself up outside a Paris cafe.
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