Police carried out checks at Brussels’ Gare du Midi train and metro stations on Monday evening after two mysterious packages were found on different train platforms, authorities said.
Federal police say one package was found on platform 20 and another on platform 18 at around 17:20 p.m. Both the subway and train stations were evacuated as a precaution.
All trains travelling to and from Brussels Midi have been suspended, severely disrupting train travel during rush hour.
The army’s bomb disposal service, DOVO, has also been called in to examine both packages.
The incident comes a day after Brussels commemorated the 10th anniversary of the 2016 terrorist attacks, a trauma that is still felt in the country and which authorities say has highlighted a 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 injured in the worst peacetime massacre in Belgium.
In Belgium, the threat level remains “serious,” at three on a four-point scale, following an October 2023 attack in Brussels, where a gunman shot dead two Swedish soccer fans before being killed by police.
Belgium was criticized for security failures in the wake of the 2016 bombings, something the head of the country’s national threat analysis center OCAM, Gert Vercauteren, said he remembers well.
Today, Belgium’s justice system, police, and intelligence services claim to have significantly improved information sharing.
The number of state security service staff has increased from 600 to 950 agents in a decade. “We have learned the right lessons,” Vercauteren said.
Creating a shared database of extremist profiles was “a big step forward,” he said.
This database, to which all security services, including municipal police forces working with community outreach staff, can access and contribute, is constantly updated.
© BalkansWeb