Brussels on lockdown over ‘serious and immediate threat’

Belgium Prime Minister Charles Michel said the decision to raise the threat level was taken “based on quite precise information about the risk of an attack like the one that happened in Paris... where several individuals with arms and explosives launch actions, perhaps even in several places at the same time.”

Authorities across Europe, the Mideast and in Washington are trying to determine how a network of primarily French and Belgian attackers with links to Islamic extremists in Syria plotted and carried out the deadliest violence in France in decades — and how many may still be on 

the run.

A new potential link emerged on Saturday in Turkey, where authorities said they detained a 26-year-old Belgian suspected of connections to Islamic extremists — and possibly to the Paris attacks.

Belgium’s national Crisis Centre had raised its terrorism alert for the Brussels region to Level 4, which indicates a “serious and immediate threat.” Belgium’s special security Cabinet held an emergency meeting on Saturday morning.

Brussels was home to the suspected organiser of the November 13 Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, and Belgium has filed charges of “participation in terrorist attacks and participation in the activities of a terrorist organisation” against three suspects relating to the Paris attacks.

At least one Paris attacker, Salah Abdeslam, crossed into Belgium the morning after the attacks. A Paris police official and the Paris prosecutor’s office said Saturday they had no firm information on Abdeslam’s whereabouts, including whether he was in the Brussels area.