Eight people were arrested on Monday evening in Belgium as part of two preliminary investigations on suspicion of the “terrorist attack”, the federal prosecutor announced on Tuesday.
According to a judicial source contacted by AFP, those arrested are “very young radicals” from the jihadist movement.
Potential targets have not been determined at this time. The public prosecutor’s office said that two files, which are linked to each other, spoke of a planned attack.
Five searches were carried out in Molenbeek (Brussels region), Eupen (east) and Dutch-speaking Belgium (north) in the three Antwerp districts of Merksem, Borgerhout and Deurne, as part of the first case investigated in Antwerp.
They led to five arrests, and at least two of those five suspects are suspected of “preparing a terrorist attack in Belgium.”
In the second case, which was investigated in Brussels, three suspects were arrested in Molenbeek, Schaerbeek (another Brussels municipality) and in Zaventem, very close to the capital. These people are also suspected of having prepared an attack on Belgian soil.
“There are connections between the two files, but a more detailed investigation must show to what extent the two cases were intertwined,” emphasizes the federal prosecutor’s office.
Belgium was the target of attacks alleged seven years ago by the Islamic State (IS) group, which is worth ten men – including an absent suspected dead in Syria – currently being tried by a sit-down court.
These attacks left 32 dead and more than 340 injured as of March 22, 2016.
Shortly before 8 a.m. this morning, a double suicide attack took place in the departure hall of Brussels-Zaventem Airport. A third followed an hour later in the subway of the European capital, which was also carried out by a suicide bomber with explosives.
There have also been several deadly attacks against members of the armed forces who are being attacked by radicalized people over the past seven years.
In November 2022, a 29-year-old police inspector in Brussels was fatally stabbed in the neck by a man shouting “Allah Akbar”. The suspect Yassine M., a former radicalized prison inmate, was charged with “murder in a terrorist context”.