BRUSSELS, June 8. /TASS/. Security forces in Belgium have arrested 16 natives of Chechnya during a nationwide anti-terrorist operation, the country’s public prosecutor’s office said on Monday.

"A total of 16 terrorist suspects have been arrested in the course of the anti-terrorist operation, all of them are Chechen immigrants," the statement of the prosecutor’s office says. It also noted that "the operation had been held simultaneously in the framework of two parallel investigations among radical Chechnya natives."

During the operation, the federal police searched 21 apartments, ten of which are located in the port city of Ostend in the northwest of the country.