Belgian Police Arrest 16 in Raids, as Brussels Is Still in Lockdown
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Belgian prosecutors announced early Monday that police had detained 16 people in 22 raids but that Paris fugitive Salah Abdeslam was not among them.
Despite the raids, authorities maintained their highest terror alert in the capital for a third straight day.
Federal prosecutor Eric Van Der Sypt said early Monday 19 raids were carried out in Molenbeek and other boroughs of Brussels and three raids were carried out in other cities, France-24 reports.
“We have to stress that no firearms or explosives were discovered [...] during the raids,” Van Der Sypt said.” Certain elements in the investigation made Sunday’s intervention necessary. The investigation will in any case be relentlessly continued.”
One of those detained was injured when a car he was in tried to ram police during an attempted getaway, Van Der Sypt said.
The raids capped a tense day with hundreds of troops patrolling and authorities hunting for one or more suspected militants, the Belgian government chose Sunday to keep the capital on the highest state of alert into the start of the workweek to prevent a Paris-style attack.
Citing a “serious and imminent” threat, Prime Minister Charles Michel announced that schools and universities in Brussels will be closed Monday, with the subway remaining shut down, preventing a return to normal in the city that is also home to the European Union’s main institutions.
“We fear an attack like in Paris, with several individuals, perhaps in several places,” Michel said after chairing a meeting of Belgium’s National Security Council.
Belgium has been at the heart of investigations into the Paris attacks after links to Brussels, and the poor district of Molenbeek in particular, emerged.
Fugitive suspected militant Salah Abdeslam, 26, slipped back home to Brussels from Paris shortly after the attacks, in which his elder brother Brahim blew himself up at a cafe.
Fears of the risks he still poses prompted the cancellation last week of an international friendly soccer match in Brussels against Spain.
In the Belgian capital the city's historic Grand Place, usually bustling with tourists, was quiet on Sunday, with just some stragglers crossing the cobblestones as an armoured vehicle stood outside the imposing town hall.
"Brussels at centre of Paris attack investigations"
Brussels has been at the centre of investigations into the perpetrators of last Friday’s deadly terrorist assault on Paris, which saw 130 people killed in a wave of shootings and suicide bombings across the French capital.
Three people detained in Brussels are facing terrorism charges, while French authorities have said the attacks were planned in the Belgian capital by a local man, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who fought for the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group in Syria and was killed in the siege of an apartment in the Paris suburb of Saint Denis on Wednesday.
Abdeslam, the suspect in the Paris attacks, was from the same Brussels neighbourhood of Molenbeek and is said by officials to have known Abaaoud in prison. Abdeslam is still on the loose and the subject of a vast international manhunt.
