Free Republic

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A gunman killed two police officers and a passer-by on Tuesday before being himself shot dead in the center of the eastern Belgian city of Liege, public broadcaster RTBF said on its website. Belgium’s anti-terrorist crisis center was monitoring the situation, Interior Minister Jan Jambon said on Twitter. It was unclear, however, what lay behind the incident in which the man had also taken a woman hostage, according to RTBF. Two other police officers had been injured, Belga news agency said. A spokeswoman for the Liege public prosecutors office confirmed that two police officers had been shot...

The Tihange power plant, an hour's drive from the Belgian capital in the province of Liege, and the Doel power plant in Antwerp have been cleared amid heightened fears of another attack. Security has been stepped up at both Doel, which houses four reactors, and Tihange, which houses three. Armed police and the Belgian military have been on site since the weekend following growing calls from the energy industry to beef up security at the potentially vulnerable plants. . . .

The body of a woman has been found in the garage of a grenade-lobbing gunman, bringing to four the number of people killed in an attack in the city of Liege, officials said Wednesday.

The Karachi Post in Pakistan claimed that the attack was linked to a sentence in an honour killing case. It said the parents of Sadia Sheikh were sentenced on Monday when there had been a bomb alert in the court.

-excerpt- The man, named by Belgian press agency Belga as 32-year-old Nordine Amrani, opened fire and threw explosives on a city centre square which was hosting a Christmas market.

FOURTEEN suspected al-Qaeda terrorists were detained in Brussels today before Gordon Brown was due to meet EU leaders. The sweep came just hours before a summit brought together the heads of the 27 EU countries in Brussels. One of the suspects is believed to be a suicide bomber mounting an operation "from which he was not expected to come back". It is thought a terror attack was being planned – but the target has not been revealed. Nearly 250 police officers raided 16 locations in the capital and one in the eastern city of Liege overnight. Computers, data storage equipment...

"Belgian police arrest Al Qaeda terror suspects," from Agence France-Presse, December 11 (thanks to Alex): AFP - Belgian police on Thursday arrested 14 suspected Al-Qaeda members, including a man believed to have been planning a suicide attack, officials announced, as EU leaders gathered in Brussels. "We don't know where the suicide attack was to take place," federal prosecutor Johan Delmulle told reporters. "It could have been an operation in Pakistan or Afghanistan, but it can't be ruled out that Belgium or

The front page of all Belgian newspapers today had the pictures of two little girls. “Murdered” the captions said. Nathalie Mahy (10) and Stacy Lemmens (7) disappeared on 9 June. Their bodies were discovered yesterday. Exactly ten years ago, before Stacy and Nathalie were born, the Belgian papers also brought pictures of murdered girls. Their names were Melissa Russo (8) and Julie Lejeune (8), victims of the notorious pedophile Marc Dutroux. Stacy and Nathalie were abducted in Liège, the largest city of Wallonia, the Socialist-dominated French-speaking part of Belgium. Melissa and Julie were from the same city, often referred to...