Europe on Alert as Fear of Terrorist Attacks Escalate
Local Editor
Belgium ordered its army into the streets and anti-terror raids across Western Europe netted dozens of suspects Friday as authorities rushed to thwart more attacks by people with links to extremists.
Rob Wainwright, head of the police agency Europol, stated that foiling such attacks by returning extremists had become "extremely difficult" because Europe's estimated 2,500 to 5,000 extremists have little command structure and are increasingly sophisticated.
French, German, Belgian and Irish police had at least 30 suspects behind bars on Friday and in Brussels, authorities said a dozen searches led to the seizure of four Kalashnikov assault rifles, hand guns and explosives. Several police uniforms were also found, which Belgian authorities said suggested the plotters had intended to masquerade as police officers.
A senior Western official told the TV station that European intelligence services believe there are some 20 extremist sleeper cells in Europe.
The seizures followed a vast anti-terrorism sweep on Thursday in and around Brussels and the eastern industrial city of Verviers in which two suspects were killed in a firefight and a third wounded as police closed in on their hideout. Authorities said the overnight operation netted several returnees from Syria.
The dead Belgian suspects were named as Redouane Hagaoui, 22, also known as Abu Khalid al Maghribi, and Tarik Jadaoun, or Abu Hamza Belgiki.
Federal magistrate Eric Van der Sypt said Friday the suspects were within hours of implementing a plan to kill police. He said authorities were reasonably confident they had dismantled the core of a dangerous terrorist cell but more suspects could be at large.
"The group was on the verge of carrying out terrorist attacks to kill police officers on public roads and in police stations," Van der Sijpt told a news conference about the raids Thursday-Friday.
"I cannot confirm that we arrested everyone in this group," he told reporters.
"Their plan was to launch attacks similar to that in London when a soldier was killed. They wanted to kill policeman on the street ," he told the Daily Mail on Friday.
The Belgian government moved to send army troops into the streets beginning Saturday, as part of a 12-point, anti-terror plan lawmakers agreed to in the wake of Thursday's deadly firefight.
"You don't have the firepower to stop people with weapons of warfare," unless troops are involved, Antwerp Mayor Bart De Wever said. "We have an important Jewish community in this city which is very visible and an important target for terror," he told VRT network.
The government will also expand legislation to make traveling abroad with a terror goal a crime and allowing authorities to seize the ID cards of people suspected of traveling to such areas.
Authorities have said there was no apparent link between the foiled plots in Belgium and last week's terror attacks in Paris on a satirical newspaper and a kosher supermarket.
However, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Friday that while there was no apparent operational connection between the two terror groups, "the link that exists is the will to attack our values."
The nine men and three women arrested in France overnight were to be questioned about "possible logistic support" they may have given to the Paris gunmen.
Visiting the tense French capital Friday, US Secretary of State John Kerry met President Francois Hollande and toured the sites of last week's attacks on the Charlie Hebdo weekly and the Hyper Cacher market. Twenty people, including the three gunmen, were killed.
Another 13 people were detained in Belgium and two were arrested in France in a separate anti-terror sweep following the firefight Thursday in Verviers. And in Ireland, police arrested a suspected French-Algerian militant at Dublin Airport as he tried to enter the country using a false passport. The man, who was being interrogated, landed on a European watch list after expressing support in social media for last week's attacks.
Authorities said most of those detained or killed in Belgium were citizens and some had returned from Syria, where 450 Belgians are believed to have joined the fight with "ISIL" extremists, according to Peter Neumann of the London-based International Center for the Study of Radicalization. He said about 150 have since returned home.
In Germany, Interior Ministry spokesman Tobias Plate spoke of an "abstract high danger" following the arrests in Berlin of two men suspected of recruiting fighters for the "ISIL" group in Syria. Prosecutors said 250 police officers participated in the dawn raids on 11 residences, part of a months-old investigation into Turkish extremists.
A poll carried out this week in the wake of the Paris attacks for ZDF television, showed 70 percent of Germans fear an attack on the country by extremists, up 10 percentage points from a survey taken in September.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team
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