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 A week after the Paris attacks carried out by Islamic State
militants, of whom one suspect from Brussels is at large and said by
authorities to be highly dangerous, the city was placed on the top
level "four" in the government's threat scale after a meeting of top
ministers, police and security services.
"The advice for the population is to avoid places where a lot of
people come together like shopping centers, concerts, events or
public transport stations wherever possible," a spokesman for the
government's crisis center said.
Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel declined to give the reason
why the authorities raised the alert level but told a news
conference the government would review the security situation on
Sunday afternoon.
The metro system would remain closed until then, in line with the
recommendation of the crisis center, he said.
 The crisis center website said it was calling on local authorities
to cancel large events, urge people to avoid crowds, postpone soccer
matches, close the Brussels metro for the weekend and stepping up
the military and police presence.
Suspected militant Salah Abdeslam, 26, returned home to Brussels
from Paris after the attacks, when his elder brother Brahim blew
himself up at a cafe.
Fears of the risk he still poses prompted the cancellation last week
of an international friendly soccer match in Brussels against Spain.
The crisis center said weekend games in the top two professional
divisions should now be postponed.
The alert level for the whole country was raised following the Paris
attacks to level three out of four, implying a "possible or
probable" threat. Previously, only certain sites, such as the U.S.
embassy, were at level three.
Belgium, and its capital in particular, have been at the center of
investigations into the Paris attacks - which included suicide
bombers targeting a France-Germany soccer match - after the links to
Brussels emerged. Three people detained in Brussels are facing
terrorism charges.
French authorities have said the attacks were planned in Brussels by
a local man, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, 28, who fought for Islamic State in
Syria and was killed in the siege of an apartment in the Paris
suburb of St. Denis on Wednesday.
Salah Abdeslam, who was from the same Brussels neighborhood of
Molenbeek and is said by officials to have known Abaaoud in prison,
was pulled over three times by French police but not arrested as he
was driven back to Brussels early last Saturday by two of the men
now in custody.
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As well as Abdeslam's brother, a second man from Molenbeek, Bilal
Hadfi, was also among the Paris suicide bombers.
Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon told reporters he wanted a
register of everyone living in Molenbeek because it was not clear at
present who was there, with authorities conducting door-to-door
checks of every house.
"The local administration should knock on every door and ask who
really lives there," Jambon said.
Soldiers are already on guard in certain parts of Brussels,
including at the institutions of the European Union headquartered in
the city.
Brussels is also home to the headquarters of NATO.
The last time any part of the country was put on maximum alert was
in May 2014 when a gunman shot dead four people at the Jewish Museum
in Brussels. At that time, Jewish schools, synagogues and other
institutions were put on level four.
The capital as a whole was last at the level four for about a month
at the end of 2007 and the start of 2008, when authorities
intercepted a plot to free convicted Tunisian Nizar Trabelsi.
Brussels' traditional New Year fireworks display was canceled.
Trabelsi was sentenced in Belgium in 2003 to 10 years for attempting
to blow up a Belgian military base that houses U.S. soldiers. He was
extradited to the United States in 2013.
(Additional reporting by Alastair Macdonald, editing by Jan
Strupczewski, Sandra Maler and Stephen Powell)
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