By AFP Belgium, France face ‘imminent’ terror attacks — report
A Belgian soldier patrols the shopping centre City2 in central Brussels, Belgium, on Wednesday (Reuters photo)
JordanTimes: BRUSSELS — A fresh wave of Daesh terror group’s militants has left Syria and could commit attacks imminently in France and Belgium, Belgian police have been warned, according to media reports on Wednesday.
“Fighters traveling without passports left Syria about a week and a half ago in order to reach Europe by boat via Turkey and Greece,” a memo sent to police and security services across Belgium said, according to La Derniere Heure newspaper.
The militants were traveling armed and plan to carry out attacks in groups of two the memo is reported to have said.
Their action is imminent,” the memo added, without giving the total of suspected attackers.
Belgium’s OCAM national crisis centre in a statement did not deny the report, but said the information needed to be looked at further.
The information reported by the media “is non-contextualised and, as such, has not made a direct impact on the current level of threat” in Belgium.
Belgium’s terror alert is currently at the second-highest level of three, which means a threat is possible and likely.
Belgium is still reeling from Daesh suicide bombings at Brussels airport and on the city’s metro on March 22 which killed 32 people and wounded hundreds more.
They came five months after militants, many of them from Brussels, carried out gun and bombing attacks in Paris on November 13, killing 130 people and wounding hundreds more.
France, which is hosting the Euro 2016 football championships, is on maximum alert after an assailant previously convicted for jihadism killed a police officer and his partner on Monday.
The attacker told police negotiators before being gunned down that he had sworn loyalty to Daesh three weeks earlier.
It was not immediately clear how seriously French and Belgian authorities were treating the threat. French authorities told local newspapers that such warnings are relatively common.
“According to the information received, these people could already in be in possession of the necessary weapons and their action could be imminent,” the alert said, according to the Belgian Dernière Heure newspaper.
The attackers were expected to split into two groups, one heading toward France and the other toward Belgium, and to conduct attacks in pairs, the alert said. It offered no details on the basis of the information.
Belgian counterterrorism police declined to comment. Belgium’s security threat coordination center has not raised its threat level, which is currently set at three out of four levels, with the fourth being the expectation of an imminent attack.
The group was planning to travel from Syria into Europe via boat from Turkey to Greece, without passports, according to the alert.
Possible Belgian targets include a Brussels shopping center, an American fast-food chain and a police station, the newspaper reported.
On Monday, an attacker claiming loyalty to the Islamic State killed a police captain and his partner, who worked at a police department outside Paris. The assailant was killed in a police raid.
Amid numerous public memorials for the slain couple, President François Hollande called for international unity to face a “long war” against terrorism.
This battle, he said in an address at the Elysee Palace, is “not just in a few countries but in the world. Everyone can be concerned.”
In an interview on France Inter radio, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls predicted the fight could take decades.
“Other innocent people will die,” Valls said. “It is very hard to say. People can accuse me — and I completely understand — of making the society even more fearful than it already is today with these events. But, unfortunately, this is the reality. It will take a generation.”
Officials added that it was unclear whether there was any link to the murder of a senior policeman and his partner on Monday by a man who pledged allegiance to IS.
