Belgian police on Thursday averted ''major terror attacks'' similar to the ones last week in Paris when special forces killed two jihadists returning from Syria in raids in the Brussels region and in Verviers, a city in the eastern part of the country.
Belgian public television station RTBF reported that the public prosecutor’s office confirmed the deaths of two suspects and arrests of "several" more. Federal prosecutors were quoted as saying there had been a police operation aimed at jihadists who have returned from the Middle East.
The raids included one on an apartment above a bakery in Verviers. Police said no officers were injured and that the suspects opened fire on them as the swooped in.
Magistrate Eric Van der Sypt told reporters in Brussels the suspects were on the verge of committing a major terrorist attack in Belgium.
He told an emergency press conference that anti-terrorist raids were underway and that Belgium's terror alert level was raised to its second highest level. The raids were part of an investigation into extremists returning from Syria.
The raids against terrorists in Belgium took place one week after attacks in Paris including a massace on the headquarters of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and a hostage-taking in a Jewish supermarket two days later. A total of 17 victims, including four Jewish men in the shop, were killed in the events. The three terrorists were killed in police operations.
According to the EU police agency Europol, up to 5,000 European Union citizens have joined jihadist group ranks in Syria and Iraq.
“We’re talking about 3,000, 5,000 EU nationals,” Europol head Rob Wainwright told a British parliamentary committee when asked how many foreign fighters had left from Europe.
“We’re dealing with a large body of mainly young men who have the potential to come back and have the potential or intent and capability to carry out attacks we have seen in Paris in the last week,” he said.
Wainwright also called for greater scrutiny of the use of social media by jihadist groups.
“We have to have a closer, much more productive relationship between law enforcement and technology firms.
“One of the important evolutions we’re seeing right now in the current terrorist threat is the way the Internet is used, clearly much more aggressively, much more imaginatively by the networks,” he added.
The European Union’s counter-terrorism chief Gilles de Kerchove estimated in September 2014 that around 3,000 European citizens had joined jihadists in Syria and Iraq.
De Kerchove said that around 30 percent have returned to their EU countries.