Plot to attack Belgium’s prime minister foiled

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By Sudip Kar-Gupta

BRUSSELS (Reuters) -A group planning attacks on Belgian politicians, including Prime Minister Bart de Wever, has been thwarted, the public prosecutor’s office and deputy prime minister Maxime Prevot said on Thursday.

“The news of a planned attack targeting Prime Minister Bart de Wever is extremely shocking,” Prevot wrote on X.

“It highlights that we are facing a very real terrorist threat and that we have to remain vigilant,” he added.

Belgium has had to contend with attacks from people associated with Islamic State, as well as rising insecurity from feuding drug gangs, over the last decade.

Belgian Justice Minister Annelies Verlinden wrote on X that the police operation against the cell had possibly prevented an attack from being carried out on Thursday.

The Belgium federal public prosecutor’s office said two suspects had been arrested and were being questioned by Antwerp police as a result of the operation.

“This judicial intervention is part of an investigation into, among other things, attempted terrorist murder and participation in the activities of a terrorist group,” it said in a statement.

“There are indications that the intention was to carry out a jihadist-inspired terrorist attack targeting politicians,” added the prosecutor’s office.

It said searches of the houses of suspects in Antwerp had turned up a device that looked similar to an improvised explosive device, a bag of steel balls and indications that the group aimed to use a drone as part of their attack.

In March 2016, 32 people were killed in suicide bomb explosions at Brussels airport and in the city’s metro in attacks claimed by Islamic State, while in October 2023 a self-proclaimed Islamist militant shot dead two Swedish citizens who had been in Brussels for an international soccer match.

(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta;Editing by Benoit Van Overstraeten and Bill Berkrot)