The Belgian authorities arrested two suspected of preparing attacks in Brussels during the holidays, said Tuesday the Belgian federal prosecutor. The Associated Press
The investigation revealed "serious threat of attacks emblematic in Brussels to be held during the holidays year-end places," said the prosecutor.
A source close to the investigation said the main square in the Belgian capital, full of Christmas shoppers and passers-by at this time of year, was one of the alleged targets.
"In the Grand Place there are many people and soldiers and police are patrolling in addition to a police station close," said the source who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized by the judge investigating the investigations to comment in public .
The two suspects, according to the source were men, were arrested following records Sunday and Monday in the area of Brussels, in the Liege area and the region of Flemish Brabant, prosecutors said. They were not made public their names or further details.
One of them was accused of acting as leader and recruiter of a terrorist group that was preparing terrorist acts, the other of involvement in terrorist activities as principal actor or co-author said the prosecutor's office.
In the records of military training uniform style propaganda objects militant group Islamic State and supplies being reviewed, he said prosecutors were confiscated. No weapons or explosives were found.
During operation he stopped a total of six. Four were released and two remain arrested, the prosecutor's office said.
Prosecutors said no further details would be made public, but that the investigation was unrelated to the attacks of 13 November in Paris, where several suspects, including alleged mastermind Abaaoud Abdelhamid and Abdeslam Salah fugitive, had connections with Belgium .
On 21 November, following the attacks in Paris in which 130 people died and hundreds were injured, the Belgian capital temporarily activated its highest level of alert.
Police and soldiers deployed in Brussels were ordered to take special precautions to ensure their own safety, said Benoit Ramacker spokesman Crisis Centre of the Belgian government.
The police and military patrols in the Belgian capital were reinforced after the attacks in Paris and Ramacker said an official reassessment of the level of alert following recent searches and arrests determined that officers and soldiers deployed to protect citizens from attacks extremists could be the target of attacks.
Nine other people with alleged ties to the terrorist attacks in Paris have been arrested in Belgium last December 22. Belgium has also been one of the European countries from which most foreign conscripts fighting for the State Islamic group and other Islamic extremist organizations.
The Belgian anti-terrorist police searched a home on January 15 in the eastern city of Verviers looking at a group of people who had returned from Syria. In step two assumptions concerning Abaaoud jihadists killed, supposedly ideologue of the attacks in Paris and a third was arrested.