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Police were conducting searches at Brussels’ Gare du Midi train and metro stations on Monday evening after two mysterious packages were found on separate train platforms, authorities said.
Federal police indicate that one package was found on platform 20 and another on platform 18 at around 5:20 pm. Both the metro and train stations were evacuated as a precaution.
All trains travelling to and from Brussels Midi have been suspended, heavily disrupting train travel during peak hours.
The army’s bomb disposal service, DOVO, has also been called in to examine both packages.
The incident comes a day after Brussels commemorated 10 years since 2016 terrorist bombings, a trauma that is still felt in the country and that authorities say sharpened focus on intelligence and counterterrorism.
In that attack, the Maelbeek metro station was targeted, as well as Brussels Airport in Zaventem, killing 32 people and leaving more than 300 wounded in Belgium’s worst peacetime massacre.
In Belgium, the threat level remains “serious,” at three on a four-point scale, following an October 2023 attack in Brussels that saw a gunman shoot dead two Swedish football fans before being killed by police.
Belgium was criticised for security failings in the run-up to the 2016 bombings, something the head of the country’s OCAM national threat analysis centre, Gert Vercauteren, said he remembers well.
Today, Belgium’s justice system, police and intelligence services assert they have significantly improved information sharing.
The number of state security service staff has increased from 600 to 950 agents in a decade. “We have learnt the right lessons,” said Vercauteren said.
The creation of a shared database on extremist profiles was “a major step forward,” he said.
This database, which all security services, including municipal police forces working with community outreach staff, can access and contribute to, is constantly updated.
Additional sources • AFP
