Brussels on Highest Alert Level After 26 Killed in Bombings

Belgium was on the highest terror-alert level after three bombings in Brussels on Tuesday killed at least 26, injured more than 100 and raised fears of a string of follow-up attacks.

Prime Minister Charles Michel, calling it “a violent and cowardly” assault, deployed Belgium’s military to secure the capital after two explosions at the airport and a bombing at a subway station a short walk from European Union headquarters.

è Women injured in the Brussels airport explosion on March 22.
square before the information Women injured in the Brussels airport explosion on March 22. Photographer: Ketevan Karda/Georgian Public Broadcaster via AP Photos

“We are trying to stabilize the situation to assure security on other sites for which there is still concern,” Michel told reporters. “This is a dark moment for our nation. We need calm and solidarity.”

The Brussels transport network was shut down as Belgian police combed the airport and public sites for booby-trapped packages. Some schools, train stations and shopping centers were evacuated and emergency services struggled to cope with what appeared to be a coordinated attack along the lines of the November mass murders of 130 at multiple locations in Paris.

Social Affairs Minister Maggie De Block estimated that 11 were dead and 81 injured at the airport. Brussels public transport reported 15 dead and 55 injured at the subway station. One of the airport attacks was a suicide bombing, the federal prosecutor said. No one claimed responsibility.

The attacks occurred four days after Belgian police captured Salah Abdeslam, believed to be the only surviving perpetrator of the Paris massacres. The four-month manhunt had been accompanied by criticism that Belgium was too late to recognize the jihadist threat in some poorer Brussels neighborhoods.

The underground attack wreaked carnage down the street from where EU leaders held their latest summit on Friday. In Berlin, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere characterized it as an assault on Europe itself.

“It seems clear that the attack targets — an international airport, a subway station near EU institutions — indicate that this terrorist attack wasn’t just aimed at Belgium, but at our freedom, our freedom of movement,” De Maiziere said.

Tightened Security

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, on the road leading to the airport, raised its state of alert. Security was tightened at airports across Europe, and Belgium reinforced border checks with France. Belgian’s nuclear power plants increased security at the government’s behest, Belga reported, citing operator Engie SA.

By midday, Brussels had gone back into the same type of lockdown that accompanied a heightened state of alert for several days last November after the Paris attacks.

Belgian officials urged people to stay where they are and to communicate via social media to avoid putting excess strain on already overloaded mobile phone networks. Road access to Brussels was curbed and some tunnels were shut. Access roads and rail lines were halted to the airport, in the suburb of Zaventem, about 15 kilometers (9 miles) from central Brussels. The airport was shut for the day and incoming flights diverted.

The assaults during the morning rush hour appeared calculated to inflict the maximum possible damage. The airport was jammed with people checking in, and the subway line is on the busy route from the outskirts of Brussels to the center.

Airport Rubble

Panicked travelers were shown fleeing past the departure hall’s blown-out windows and through the rubble of ceiling tiles in television images. “Soldiers are pushing us back, people are running in every direction,” a witness named David told RTL television.

Frederic Van Leeuw, the federal prosecutor, told reporters that emergency crews were carefully sifting through shredded suitcases for unexploded bombs. VRT news said a third explosive device was discovered at the airport.

Smoke poured out of the Maelbeek metro station, one stop from the main offices of the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm. At least two seriously injured, soot-covered people were seen taken out on stretchers and wailing passengers fled as police cordoned off the station.

“I heard the explosion,” said Frederick Willis, a Ghana native who got off the metro after dropping his son off at school. “It was very loud. I am looking for a place to hide.”

The Brussels subway network was shut down, while Belgian army trucks sealed off the area near the prime minister’s office. The EU’s foreign service told staff in the building to stay put and the rest not to come in; a European Parliament hearing with the EU’s top banking regulator went on as scheduled.

Jonathan Stearns
Bloomberg
March 22, 2016