Counter-terror officers kill two and arrest 15 suspected jihadis in Belgium and France with Europe on high alert for further attacks

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

A major Islamist plot to kill police officers in the street has been foiled at the eleventh hour, prosecutors have said, after counter-terror raids led to the arrest of 15 suspected jihadis in Belgium and France.

In the same series of raids, two suspected terrorists were shot dead by police and another wounded in the Belgian town of Verviers, near the German border.

Authorities said they had moved to dismantle an active terror cell spanning both European countries to avert an imminent terrorist attack aimed at police officers and buildings in Belgium.

Eric van der Sypt, a Belgian federal magistrate, said 13 suspected terrorists were arrested in Belgium overnight with a further two detained in France. Nine of the suspects were held in raids in Molenbeek, two in Brussels, one in Berchem, one in Verviers, where the shootout took place, and two in France.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Belgian federal prosecutor Eric van der Sypt speaks to the press in Brussels. Photograph: Julien Warnand/EPA

All three Verviers gunmen were Belgian nationals and are thought to have belonged to a homegrown cell of jihadis that recently returned from Syria. Van der Sypt added that officers were still working to formally identify the two gunmen killed in the shootout.

At the address in Verviers, police found ammunition and weapons including four Kalashnikovs, several smaller firearms and explosives. Search teams also discovered several police uniforms, walkie-talkies, radios, mobile phones and false documents and a “significant amount of money”, Van der Sypt said.

In Molenbeek, police found ammunition, a knife, mobile phones and “different objects important for the investigation”.

“This operation was meant to dismantle a terrorist cell and also the logistic network behind it,” he said. “This investigation for the time being has shown that these people had intentions to kill several policemen in the street and at police [stations].”

Van der Sypt said there was no link between events in Verviers and last week’s terror attacks in Paris but revealed that an atrocity on a similar scale had been averted at the last minute.

“This operation stopped a major terrorist attack from taking place. You could say a second potential Paris has been averted,” he said.

Meanwhile, several Jewish schools in Belgium have been closed amid warnings that they could be targets for Islamist militants, while cities across the country remain on a heightened state of alert.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Cheider school, the only Orthodox Jewish school in the Netherlands, was closed on Friday after the anti-terrorism raids in neighbouring Belgium. Photograph: Koen Van Weel/EPA

Jewish schools in Brussels and Antwerp were closed and classes cancelled after officials said they were a “potential target” for radical Islamists, the Belgian news site Joods Actueel reported.

French and German authorities arrested at least 14 other people on Friday suspected of links to Islamic State (Isis), and the Gare de l’Est train station in Paris was evacuated after a bomb scare, with Europe on high alert for further potential terrorist attacks.

A senior Belgian counter-terrorism official, who was not named, told CNN that the alleged terror cell was believed to have received instructions from Islamic State. The US news outlet quoted a separate western intelligence source as saying that the ongoing terror threat in Europe involved up to 20 sleeper cells of between 120 to 180 people ready to strike in France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.

Police sources told Belgian television stations they had resolved to launch the pre-emptive operation against the terrorist suspects a fortnight ago after bugging the homes and cars of the men who were said to have recently returned from fighting in the war in Syria. The investigation concluded that a large-scale attack was imminent, targeting police stations.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest German police guard an apartment building Perleberger Strasse in Berlin during an anti-terror operation. Photograph: Paul Zinken/Corbis

Separately, on Friday morning police in Berlin arrested two men suspected of helping to recruit for Isis in Syria. The pair were taken into custody following dawn raids on 11 residences in the German capital. Police said the men were not suspected of planning attacks in Germany.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said 12 people were arrested in anti-terrorism raids in the region, targeting people linked to the gunman who attacked a kosher supermarket in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo killings and claimed ties to Isis.

The US secretary of state, John Kerry, was in Paris on Friday to meet French leaders and deliver a speech in the Paris city hall in a visit aimed at making up for the absence of senior US officials at Sunday’s mass rally in defiance of last week’s terrorist attacks.

The head of the European Union’s police agency, Europol, warned on Friday that the large number of radicalised Islamic extremists across Europe, their lack of command structure and growing sophistication make it “extremely difficult” for law enforcement agencies to foil every terror attack. Rob Wainwright told the Associated Press that security and law enforcement agencies need to cooperate more closely.

He said the threat is evolving as cells controlled by a clear commander have been replaced by “thousands of independent actors or semi-independent terrorist suspects” who are difficult to track.

“That’s the real problem I think that the intelligence community faces right now,” he said.

The French newspaper Le Figaro reported on Friday that several French national media websites, including L’Express, Le Parisien and France Inter, were experiencing problems with serving pages. The problem was traced to a common service provider, Oxalide, which said it was investigating an “incident” with its core network, but did not yet know the cause.