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Police In Belgium Arrest 6 Over New Year's Eve Terrorist Plot

A Belgian soldier patrols Brussels' Grand Place after police say they disrupted a plot to attack during New Year's Eve celebrations in Belgium.
Francois Lenoir
/
Reuters /Landov
A Belgian soldier patrols Brussels' Grand Place after police say they disrupted a plot to attack during New Year's Eve celebrations in Belgium.

A series of house raids in Belgium have put six people in custody who are suspected of being involved with a plot to carry out a terrorist attack during New Year's Eve celebrations in Brussels.

The development comes days after police in Brussels arrested two people who were suspected of planning the New Year's Eve attack; despite those arrests, the city has canceled plans for its annual fireworks show.

From Brussels, NPR's Teri Schultz reports:

"Today's searches in several different districts of Brussels did not turn up weapons or explosives, officials say, but along with the six people taken in for questioning were seized computer and data equipment, cellphones and materials used in a shooting game that uses replicas of military-style weapons."

The raids stem from an investigation into a gang called the Kamikaze Riders, according to Flanders News, which reports that some of the group's members "apparently sympathize with IS [or al-Qaida]."

The authorities say that house raids in the Brussels area Wednesday also netted a man suspected of being linked to last month's deadly attacks in Paris. The man is the 10th person to be held in Belgium over the attacks that killed 130 people; a key suspect, Salah Abdeslam, remains at large.

Teri reports that the man detained in the Paris case has been charged with "terrorist murder."

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Bill Chappell is a writer and editor on the News Desk in the heart of NPR's newsroom in Washington, D.C.