{"id":7985,"date":"2026-03-23T20:38:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T20:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/7985\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T20:38:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T20:38:09","slug":"police-evacuate-brussels-midi-train-station-after-finding-two-mysterious-packages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/7985\/","title":{"rendered":"Police evacuate Brussels Midi train station after finding two mysterious packages"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Published on
\n 23\/03\/2026 – 19:01 GMT+1\n <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

All trains travelling to and from Brussels Midi have been suspended, heavily disrupting train travel during peak hours. <\/p>\n

The army’s bomb disposal service, DOVO, has also been called in to examine both packages.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Today, Belgium’s justice system, police and intelligence services assert they have significantly improved information sharing.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The creation of a shared database on extremist profiles was “a major step forward,” he said.<\/p>\n

This database, which all security services, including municipal police forces working with community outreach staff, can access and contribute to, is constantly updated.<\/p>\n

Additional sources \u2022 AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published on 23\/03\/2026 – 19:01 GMT+1 Police were conducting searches at Brussels’ Gare du Midi train and metro…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7986,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[18,3768,5714],"class_list":{"0":"post-7985","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brussels","8":"tag-brussels","9":"tag-trains","10":"tag-travel-restrictions"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@be\/116280420168063252","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}