Brussels // Belgium’s capital shut its metro system and shuttered shops and public buildings on Saturday as a terror alert was raised to its highest level over an “imminent threat” of gun and bomb attacks.
Belgian prime minister Charles Michel said authorities feared a “Paris-style” attack “with explosives and weapons at several locations” despite the hundreds of soldiers patrolling Brussels that is also home to the European Union and Nato headquarters.
Belgium’s national crisis centre raised its alert level to 4, “signifying a very serious threat for the Brussels region”, while the alert level remained at 3 for the rest of the country.
The centre urged citizens to avoid crowded areas such as concerts and transport hubs in Belgium’s capital, which is also home to the EU and Nato headquarters, and recommended that authorities in the Brussels region “consider cancelling major events” including scrapping first and second division football matches this weekend.
Brussels-based extremists are increasingly at the heart of the Paris investigation and police have multiplied raids in the city’s poorest districts in a rush to round up suspects before they disappear or launch fresh attacks.
Investigators are still trying to track down Salah Abdeslam, one of the gunmen who is still on the loose after the coordinated wave of attacks on Parisian nightspots on November 13. The attacks left 130 dead and were claimed by the extremist group ISIL .
The head of Egypt’s Al Ahzar, one of the principal Sunni authorities, on Saturday appealed to disassociate Islam from extremist attacks, saying Muslims themselves had suffered most from “the catastrophe of terrorism”.
Sheikh Ahmed Al Tayyeb also appealed for an end to anti-Muslim violence in western countries, such as attacks on mosques.
“Those who have burned Qurans or houses of God in the West should know that these acts are also terrorism by any standard,” Sheikh Tayyeb said at a meeting of senior Muslim clerics in Cairo.
The carnage in Paris has put all of Europe on edge as it emerged that the extremists involved slipped between countries unnoticed, prompting the European Union to rush through reforms to tighten border checks in its cherished passport-free Schengen zone.
In Turkey, police arrested a Belgian of Moroccan origin in connection with the Paris attacks in the resort of Antalya, the site of last week’s G20 summit, along with two other suspects, probably Syrians.
Ahmet Dahmani, 26, is accused of helping to scout the Paris attacks and then preparing to illegally cross the Turkish-Syrian border to rejoin ISIL after arriving in Turkey from Amsterdam on his Belgian passport.
The UN Security Council on Friday authorised nations to “take all necessary measures” to fight ISIL and other extremist groups after a wave of terror attacks across the world that has left hundreds dead in recent weeks.
The UN resolution came as gunmen with an Al Qaeda branch besieged a luxury hotel in the Malian capital of Bamako, killing 21 people.
Mali was struck a week after Paris and Beirut – where 44 where killed in ISIL bombings – and three weeks after ISIL downed a Russian plane killing 224 people.
In grieving Paris, citizens defiantly poured into the streets and on to cafe terraces on Friday night to mark one week since the carnage with a noisy minute of non-silence as urged by several artists in the country.
Outside La Belle Equipe restaurant where 18 were gunned down, a crowd stood under a light rain around a heap of flowers and candles singing the Marseillaise anthem before whooping and yelling at the top of their voices at 9.20pm, when the attacks started.
Benoit Seblain, sitting at a cafe not far from the Bataclan concert hall where 89 people were massacred, admitted he was “a bit afraid”.
“But we told ourselves we have to try and live like we did before,” he said.
France has been shaken to its core by a dramatic week which began with the attacks and saw a violent shootout on Wednesday between police and extremists holed up in a Paris apartment.
The suspected attack ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud was killed in the police assault along with his cousin Hasna Aitboulahcen and an unidentified suicide bomber. Eight others were arrested.
Abaaoud was a known Belgian extremist thought to be fighting in Syria and his presence in Europe raised troubling questions about a breakdown in intelligence and border security.
Prosecutors said on Friday that two of the three men who blew themselves up near the Stade de France stadium -- the first of the wave of attacks -- may have entered Europe through Greece, posing as refugees fleeing the Syrian war.
The EU agreed Friday to rush through reforms to the passport-free Schengen zone by the end of the year.
Normally only non-EU nationals have their details checked against a database for terrorism and crime when they enter the 26-nation zone, but those checks will now be extended to EU citizens.
The planned changes are a further blow to Schengen as a pillar of European unity and freedom after an unprecedented influx of migrants has caused Germany and other member states to temporarily reintroduce internal border controls.
* Agence France-Presse
