Belgium holds terror alert at 2nd highest level after shootout

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel today said the country’s terror alert would stay at the second-highest level, a day after a deadly police raid linked to November’s Paris attacks. Michel told a press conference that the OCAM national crisis centre “maintains its level three alert level, which means a threat is possible and likely”.

Brussels was locked down and the alert level raised to the highest of four shortly after the jihadist attacks in Paris that killed 130 people, but it was lowered back to three a few days later. “I want to insist on the fact that the level three is not an ordinary level,” Michel said. “We have warned for some time that level three was likely to last for some time,” he added.

Michel called on residents to “stay calm and cool-headed” as the investigation continued into Tuesday’s police raid on a suburban house which left one Kalashnikov-wielding suspect dead. “We will carefully follow the situation over the coming hours,” he said. Foreign Minister Didier Reynders added: “We have had information for quite some time that an attack could be imminent in Brussels and across Belgium, but nothing specific to the events of yesterday.”