Brussels kept on High Alert Fearing Paris Like Attack

www.youtube.com/murdikar007 Brussels kept on High Alert Fearing Paris Like Attack.

Brussels Remains on Highest Alert Level as Manhunts Expand

Terrorism Raids in Belgium Yield 16 Arrests

BRUSSELS — After a dramatic security sweep late Sunday marked by the deployment of soldiers in the historic center of the Belgian capital, the authorities here announced early Monday that 16 people had been arrested in a joint police and military operation to try to head off what the prime minister earlier described as a “serious and imminent” threat of a Paris-style terrorist assault.



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Belgian security forces conducted 19 raids in the Brussels region on Sunday and three in the southern town of Charleroi, Eric Van der Sijpt, a magistrate and spokesman for the federal prosecutor’s office, said at a late-night news conference. Backed by heavily armed soldiers, the police also sealed off at least two areas of central Brussels, including streets around the city’s medieval central square, the Grand Place, a major tourist attraction.



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But the main target of the clampdown, Salah Abdeslam, suspected to be one of the gunmen in the Nov. 13 Paris attacks, was not among those arrested, Mr. Van der Sijpt said. The raids also uncovered no weapons or explosives, he added.



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A Belgian soldier stood guard at the Grand Place Central Square in Brussels on Sunday. Credit Emmanuel Dunand/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The Belgian news media reported Sunday that Mr. Abdeslam, a resident of the Brussels borough of Molenbeek whose brother was a suicide bomber in Paris, had been seen in the eastern city of Liège but then vanished again. Mr. Van der Sijpt declined to take questions on that or other aspects of the Belgian investigation into the links between the Paris attacks and Belgium.



He said several shots were fired by the police in Molenbeek late Sunday when, during a raid on a snack bar, a car drove toward officers. One person was wounded, he added.



Sunday’s raids and show of force in the center of Brussels escalated what had been mostly low-key precautions into a highly visible and often jittery military-style operation in a city usually associated with the somnolent activity of the European Union.



The operation, the biggest in the Belgian capital since the Paris attack, began shortly after a government meeting on the crisis and a decision to maintain for a second day the highest possible alert level in Brussels.



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“We fear an attack similar to the one in Paris,” Prime Minister Charles Michel said Sunday at a news conference. “A number of individuals could launch an attack on several locations in Brussels simultaneously.” He spoke amid a growing mood of crisis as the authorities extended the hunt for Mr. Abdeslam, believed to be the only known survivor from three terrorist squads that attacked Paris, and for a widening number of suspects in Belgium linked to it.



Police officers and soldiers in camouflage blocked roads around the central headquarters of the Brussels police, near the Grand Place, and around the offices of the federal police.



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How Belgium Became Home to Recent Terror Plots

Several recent terrorism cases in Europe have had some connection to Belgium.

Russia in Syria Pilots Wrote Message on Bombs before Airstrikes

www.youtube.com/murdikar007 Russia in Syria Pilots Wrote Message on Bombs before Airstrikes "This Is For Paris"

This Is For Paris': Russian Pilots Write Messages On Bombs Against ISIS

Contributed by JAKE CARTER on November 22, 2015 at 4:17 am

Russian Federation says its aerial campaign targets IS and other “terrorists” but rebel forces and their backers accuse Moscow of focusing on moderate and Islamist fighters over jihadists.









“They have increased the number of strikes against ISIL, particularly in Raqqa, Deir-ez-Zor and down in a few of the oil infrastructure in eastern Syria, southeastern Syria”, Ryder said.



‘Pilots and technicians of Hmeymim airbase have sent their message to terrorists by priority airmail, ‘ said a caption accompanying the post.



Moscow fired 18 missiles from ships in its Caspian Sea fleet at seven targets in the Raqqa, Idlib and Aleppo provinces, according to Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu.



In at least 50 bombing raids, towns across Deir al-Zor province, including near the Iraqi border, were hit and dozens of vehicles and fuel oil tankers were destroyed, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.



Mr Putin said Russian Federation still faced a lot of work.



Later the president’s spokesman told the BBC there was no talk of putting troops on the ground in Syria.



And a member of the Russian ground crew wrote “For Ours” on another bomb – a reference to the Sinai jet crash last month. Russia concluded that it was a bomb that blew up the plane, killing 224 people, almost all of them Russians.



Putin praised the Russian operation in Syria – its largest foreign intervention outside the former Soviet Union since it occupied Afghanistan in 1979 – but said it was “still not sufficient” to wipe out the jihadists in the country.



Meanwhile, Turkey has warned Russian Federation that it must immediately stop bombing “civilian Turkmen villages” in Syria, close to the Turkish border.



Russia, which is also stepping up its own air campaign against IS, yesterday unleashed cruise missiles from warships in the Caspian Sea at targets across Syria for only the second time since it started bombings in September.

Russia in Syria- Heavy Bombers Aerial Refuelling Exercise Over Syrian Sky

www.youtube.com/murdikar007 Russia in Syria- Heavy Bombers Aerial Refuelling Exercise Over Syrian Sky.



Russia says kills 11 militants who had sworn allegiance to Islamic State

Russian security services have killed 11 Islamist militants who had been helping smuggle fighters across borders to Syria to join Islamic State, the country's anti-terrorism committee said.



It said the militants were holed up in a fortified base in a wooded, mountainous area of the Kabardino-Balkaria republic in southern Russia, near the city of Nalchik.



"The armed group organized channels for residents of the republic to be sent to the territory of the Syrian Arabic Republic so that they could take part in activities by terrorist groups," the anti-terrorism committee said in a statement.



Russia began a large-scale bombing campaign against targets in Syria on Sept. 30, which Moscow says is focused on Islamic State militants but critics say targets a wider band of opponents of Moscow's ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.



The focus on Islamic State has intensified since a Russian airliner was brought down by a bomb over Egypt's Sinai peninsula with the loss of over 200 lives. The group says it planted the bomb as a response to actions by the Russian Air Force and predicted more attacks on Russia.



The anti-terrorism committee said the militants were also preparing a series of attacks in the North Caucasus region.



Moscow has for many years battled to quell an insurgency by militants in the North Caucasus, a patchwork of mainly Muslim republics on Russia's southern rim, where separatists fought two wars in the 1990s.



(Reporting by Alexander Winning; Editing by Ralph Boulton)