Belgium Deploys Military in Cities After Terror Raids

Well, you think?

At WSJ, "Soldiers to Guard Jewish Institutions, Foreign Embassies After Foiled Terror Plot":

PHOTOS: Belgian soldiers protecting the Jewish community outside Synagogues in Antwerp pic.twitter.com/A9kc4JjQfJ

— IDF Elite (@idfelite) January 17, 2015

BRUSSELS—Belgium on Saturday started deploying soldiers to guard Jewish community institutions, foreign embassies and buildings belonging to the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as governments across Europe stepped up security after last week’s terrorist attacks in and around Paris.

Some 150 troops took up positions across Brussels and the port city of Antwerp, Defense Minister Steven Vandeput said, and their numbers could be raised to 300 if necessary.

Among the sites with special protection are the embassies of the U.S., Israel and the U.K., Mr. Vandeput said. He declined to say whether specific threats had been made against the sites under special protection, saying only that locations had been chosen by Belgium’s National Crisis Center based on a general threat assessment.

The government’s move marks the first time since the mid-1980s—when left-wing terror groups detonated a series of bombs in Belgium—that the government has used its military to help guard civilian sites in its cities. The soldiers are allowed to use their arms, a special arrangement made possible after Belgium raised its general threat level to three out of four.

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said earlier on Saturday that some troops could also be deployed outside Brussels and Antwerp, including in the eastern city of Verviers, where police killed two men and arrested several others in an antiterrorism raid on Thursday. Belgian authorities have said the suspects had been on the verge of launching attacks on police.

Meanwhile, Greek police on Saturday said they detained four suspects in connection to those foiled attacks against Belgium police. A Belgian official said later, however, that Belgian authorities had determined the Greek claim to a link wasn’t true. “The people arrested in Athens have nothing to do with the case in Belgium,” Eric Van Der Sypt, spokesman for the Belgian federal prosecutors, said.

Several other European countries have boosted security and raided suspected terrorist cells following the deadly attacks in France.

European security and intelligence officials have said in recent weeks that the terror threat is as high as it has been for many years—in large part because of the fear of radicalized European Muslims returning from the battlefields in Syria and Iraq with military training.

On Friday, France detained a dozen suspects believed to have aided the gunmen who carried out the attacks at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo’s Paris office and a kosher supermarket. The gunmen—Chérif and Said Kouachi and Amedy Coulibaly —were killed on Jan. 9 in police raids, ending three days of violence in and around Paris that left 17 people dead.

Separately, police in Germany on Friday said they had raided 11 sites in Berlin and arrested two people suspected of providing financial support and recruiting fighters for the militant group Islamic State in Syria. Another man suspected of being a member of Islamic State was also arrested, federal prosecutors said.

The Belgian troops deployed on Saturday will focus on “static protection” of buildings and the people inside, freeing up regular police to patrol the streets and do other police work, Mr. Vandeput said. They will operate under the chain of command of the police...

Keep reading.