Two Suspects Killed in Belgium Antiterror Raid

I turned on CNN early yesterday afternoon and everyone was all over this story.

Europe's Islamic jihad is totally messed up right now. And European governments are freaking out across the board.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Belgium Antiterror Raid Leaves Two Suspects Dead: Move Disrupts Imminent Terrorist Plot, Belgian Authorities Say":

BRUSSELS — Belgian police killed two people in a firefight on Thursday evening, disrupting what authorities called an imminent terrorist plot just a week after Islamist extremists set Europe on edge with massacres in Paris.

The plot was aimed at attacking the police, authorities said, and involved people who had returned from Syria, possibly fighting alongside terrorist groups there.

The police operations, which resulted in 10 raids, were the product of an investigation that began several weeks ago, before last week’s killings in Paris at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher grocery, authorities said.

“This group was on the verge of committing a terrorist attack in Belgium,” said Thierry Werts, spokesman for the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office.

The authorities raised the nation’s terror alert and said police operations continued Thursday evening. A Belgian police spokesman said extra security measures were being taken. Police wielding machine guns were seen patrolling near Brussels’s main courthouse. The Belgian government convened an emergency meeting to discuss the security situation, officials said.

The raids come as a spate of terror attacks and failed plots linked to Islamist extremists have unsettled the Continent, often fueled by turmoil in the Middle East.

Last May, Belgium was involved in the first terrorist attack believed to have been conducted by a person who fought in Syria, when a Frenchman authorities say fought with Islamic State killed four people at the Jewish Museum of Belgium in Brussels.

The firefight on Thursday evening occurred in the eastern Belgian town of Verviers, the authorities said. The police also executed search warrants in Brussels and the Brussels suburb of Halle-Vilvoorde, targeting people who were believed to be involved in the plot.

When the police went to execute the search warrants in Verviers, they were met with automatic gunfire. They also arrested one person after the gunbattle. That person hasn’t been identified. No police were injured, authorities said.

Evidence uncovered later Thursday suggested the plot was sophisticated and ambitious. Belgian media reported that police found explosives in a house they searched in the Anderlecht neighborhood of Brussels, but that the occupants of the house couldn’t be located. Further police searches in a different part of Verviers turned up four Kalashnikovs, bomb-making materials and police clothing, Belgian daily La Libre reported.

Officials declined to discuss whether there was a connection between the plot and Amedy Coulibaly, the French Islamist who killed four people at the kosher grocery last week...

More.