Early reports this morning suggested there had been one fatality, but Belgian media are now reporting that number has risen to at least 23, with dozens injured.
Brussels residents told not to use mobile telephones for calls, just text and email, to stop overload. Children being kept in schools and people being told not to move around the city.
BBC Monitoring’s Jihadist Media Team report:
There has been no jihadist claim of responsibility yet for the airport and metro explosions in Brussels today. However, online supporters of Islamic State group (IS) have praised the blasts and appear to believe that IS was responsible for them.
Some have used the Arabic-language hashtag “#Brusselsonfire” to praise the events. IS supporters have in the past used similarly-worded hashtags to celebrate IS attacks, such as “#Parisonfire” to celebrate IS’s 13 November attacks in Paris.
If IS is indeed behind the Brussels bombings, it is likely to delay claming responsibility until the operation has been concluded: i.e. that no further attacks are planned and/or its operatives are all dead or have escaped.
By contrast, al-Qaeda supporters on Twitter have not been been active in posting about the attacks, largely flagging mainstream media reports instead.
They are expecting multip le islamist attacks on London.
Two blasts tore through the departures area of Zaventem airport shortly after 08:00 local time (07:00 GMT).
An hour later, an explosion hit Maelbeek metro station. The airport and whole transport system are closed.
The attacks come four days after Salah Abdeslam, the main fugitive in the Paris attacks, was seized in Brussels.
Belgium has now raised its terror threat to its highest level.
Prime Minister Charles Michel called the attacks "blind, violent and cowardly", saying they were a "tragic moment in our country's history. I would like to call on everyone to show calmness and solidarity".
The Belgian prosecutor said it was "probably a suicide bomber" who struck the airport.
“There have been huge failings [in security] and it is unclear that the city is unsafe… if you have a man who has masterminded a plot that has killed so many people in Paris, and he is able to go back to Brussels and live in an area where terrorists are known to live, and the police only eventually catch him by accident because they are tailing someone else this shows a massive security failing by the European Union”.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has condemned what he called “barbaric acts” in Brussels, Russian news agency Interfax reports, quoting his press secretary Dmitry Peskov.
“The president resolutely condemned these barbaric acts, expressed his condolences to the Belgian people and assured King Philippe of absolute solidarity with the Belgians in these difficult hours,”
Europe continues to be a bellwether for what happens when a flood of Muslim refugees are admitted en masse. The cultural assimilation — or lack thereof — alone is causing problems ranging from a rise in Anti-semitic sentiment and mass sex attacks to bans on bacon and toilet issues.
Of course, an even graver concern is that amongst this wave of refugees from ISIS-infested territories like Syria are terrorists posing as refugees as a way to infiltrate Europe and wage jihad. Indeed, we’ve learned that a number of suspects connected to the Paris attacks that killed 130 entered Europe posing as refugees.
And now, the European Union’s police chief has revealed there may be many more Islamic jihadists currently running around Europe. Just how many is terrifying.
Via The Daily Wire:
The European Union’s police chief has announced that up to 5,000 ISIS-trained jihadists may be operating unchecked in Europe. “Europe is currently facing the highest terror threat in more than ten years.” cautioned Rob Wainwright, director of Europol.(Personally I think the figure is way understated. The number of potential jihardists is enormous)
Wainwright doubled-down on his security assessment in an interview with Germany’s Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung newspaper. “We can expect ISIL or other religious terror groups to stage an attack somewhere in Europe with the aim of achieving mass casualties among the civilian population,” he told the paper, adding that emerging terror threats “presents EU member states with completely new challenges.”
Nevertheless, Wainwright couldn’t help but throw a bone at the men and women forking over his paycheck, the multiculturalist political elites of the EU.(WHO WANT CHEAP LABOUR AND A MEANS T OBREAK DOWN THE NATIONS) “There is no concrete evidence terrorists are systematically using of the flow of refugees to infiltrate Europe,” Europol’s director insisted, disrupting his security analysis with a politically-correct aside.
And is it crazy to imagine that if the EU is admitting 5,000, there are likely even more ISIS-trained jihadists running around Europe?
As The Daily Wire concludes:
The unwillingness of European elites to admit (at least publicly) the obvious may result in the unraveling of the European Union. As hordes of poorly-vetted Muslim refugees stampede across the European continent, desperate to flee from the violence of the Middle East, the risk of terrorist infiltration compounds exponentially. If Europe doesn’t address the threat of Islamic jihad with clear-eyed honesty then expect more attacks, some perhaps larger and more catastrophic than the Paris massacre.
As Americans, we have the opportunity to benefit from Europe’s experience. Will we?
JUST LISTEN TO TRUMP AND IGNORE THE MAIN STREAM MEDIA OWNED BY THE GLOBALIST MULTICULTURALISTS ELITES AND YOU WILL NOT PERISH.