Brussels: Shots Fired On Vehicle As 16 Arrested

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   Gallery: Soldiers Patrol Streets Of Brussels As Metro Closes
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    Gallery: Soldiers Patrol Streets Of Brussels As Metro Closes

At a news conference, officials said a total of 19 houses were searched in the city - and during the operations, police fired two shots at a vehicle in Molenbeek.

One of those arrested was injured when his car tried to ram into police during an attempted getaway.

Eric Van der Sypt, a Belgian federal prosecutor, said no firearms or explosives were discovered - and added that although the police raids have ended, their investigation is ongoing.

According to Sky's Enda Brady, who is in Brussels, there are some unsubstantiated reports in Belgian media that Abdeslam is in a BMW heading towards the German border.

With an alleged terrorist still at large, schools, universities and the Metro transport system in Brussels will remain closed on Monday - as the Belgian Prime Minister expressed fears that individuals could "launch several attacks at the same time in multiple locations".

Brussels remains on the highest terror threat level, which indicates that an attack is "imminent" - while the rest of the country is on the second-highest level, to reflect an incident is "probable".

The army and police presence has been boosted in the capital to protect targets such as shops and public transport.

Belgium has been at the centre of investigations into the Paris attacks after it emerged that two of the suicide bombers lived in the poor district of Molenbeek.

French police have issued a photograph of the third man involved in the suicide blasts at the Stade de France - with officials admitting they do not know who he is.

A police source fears that Abdeslam, who is said to have travelled from Paris to Belgium shortly after the French massacre of 130 people, could be "trapped and desperate" in Brussels.

The city is on edge, with a number of bomb scares, including the closure of a railway station and the evacuation of TV station VTM, causing disruption.

Football matches and many large events were postponed over the weekend.

Eurostar is allowing anyone booked to travel to Brussels on Monday to postpone their trip.

Meanwhile, Great Britain's Davis Cup team, including Andy Murray, has delayed travelling to Belgium amid continuing security fears.

Mass raids after Paris attacks spark civil rights fears

A surge in arrests, house arrests and raids on homes and private property in the wake of the Paris attacks - including at mosques and Muslim-owned businesses - has raised alarm among rights organisations that France's extended state of emergency could curb civil liberties. 

Under emergency powers enacted following the wave of attacks in the French capital on November 13, which killed 130 people and injured hundreds more, security forces are no longer required to attain judicial approval for arrests and raids when investigating an "imminent threat".

Large public gatherings, including protests, are also banned under the emergency powers. 

During the first three days after emergency law was put into effect, 414 homes were searched, 29 people were arrested and 118 were placed under house arrest, according to a Ministry of Interior press release published on Wednesday.

The three-month long emergency powers, extended from the usual 12 days after a vote of approval by the Senate, are supposed to expire when exceptional circumstances no longer apply.

"Emergency powers are only supposed to be used in relation to an imminent threat," John Dalhuisen, director of Amnesty International's Europe and Central Asia programme, told Al Jazeera.

France's state of emergency will last for at least three months after an extension suggested by the president and prime minister [Christian Hartman/Reuters]

He explained that "anyone who [security forces or intelligence services] had a file on was re-detained, re-questioned and re-interviewed" following the Paris attacks. 

"It's hard to judge the imminence of a threat from the outside … But it doesn't take a mathematical genius to figure out that much more of this was preventative and speculative rather than linked to intelligence on [the attacks]," he said.

Amnesty International and other rights groups are concerned that certain measures "will be codified into repressive laws that violate human rights," Dalhuisen said.

According to Dalhuisen, many arrests since the Paris attacks were carried out for "justifying terrorism", under a law that could be interpreted loosely and implemented broadly in order to arrest people with controversial opinions. 

"After and since the Charlie Hebdo attacks, there were a range of arrests and some prosecutions under a law against apologising for terrorism," he said. 

Among the arrests, an 18-year-old man will face court on December 10 for justifying terrorism on Twitter, according to L'Express.

According to another article, by the French commerical radio station RTL, a 32-year-old man was sentenced to one year in prison this week for justifying terrorism, a charge he denies.

As the arrests and raids increased over the past 10 days, Yasser Louati, spokesman for the Collective Against Islamaphobia (CCIF) in France, said the number of attacks on Muslims also rose sharply.

He said that between November 14 and 19, there were at least 26 violent incidents towards Muslims across the country and that he has been "inundated" with calls about "retaliatory" attacks each day.

There are around five million Muslims among France's population of 60 million.

Louati said there has been at least 793 police raids since November 13 and that many people have been injured.

"The most shocking thing was that several mosques were raided at night and thrashed by police.

"We are questioning the efficiency of the attacks - is such brutality necessary for one arrest?"

In Nice, the fragment of a police bullet struck a six-year-old girl in the neck and ear, the Nice Matin local newspaper reported as it posted a video of the aftermath. 

In Aubervilliers, a mosque was raided at night and police pulled out the ceilings, broke the doors and threw books - including the Quran - on the floor, Louati said.

Meanwhile, with many demanding that Muslims apologise for the deadly attacks on November 13, he said "we didn't even have the right to feel sad about them - I'm heartbroken for the victims and their families. They were of all different backgrounds: Christians, Muslims, Jews, black and white."

"France has declared a war on terrorism, but they chose the wrong enemy. Muslims are the first victims of terrorism throughout the world," he said.

Along with the emergency provisions in place for three months, President Francois Hollande last week called for additional "constitutional amendments", saying France is in "a state of siege".

Among those amendments are measures which include revoking the citizenship of convicted "terrorists" who carry dual nationalities and expelling foreigners deemed a "threat" by intelligence services.

Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch, speaking on the broader impact of government surveillance - a measure Hollande said would increase following the events of November 13 - urged caution about preventing the availability of strong encryption services. 

"We look to our leaders not for fear-mongering but for cool-headed assessments of what measures are necessary and proportionate for protection," said HRW's General Counsel Dinah PoKempner.

"In the coming weeks, [we] expect many proposals worldwide to curtail rights and expand surveillance in the name of counterterrorism," she said.

Syrian journalist killed while covering army operations against Islamic State

DAMASCUS, Syria – A Syrian journalist was killed Saturday while covering the army’s operations against Islamic State militants in the country’s central region, Syria’s official news agency said, the latest of dozens of journalists killed while covering the brutal conflict.

Wasim al-Nuqari, a 38-year-old war reporter, was killed in the eastern countryside of Homs province, SANA said. Al-Nuqari worked at Syrian TV for many years and had recently been working as a war reporter for the armed forces.

Syrian Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi said in a statement Saturday that al-Nuqari’s death is another “medal” of honour for the Syrian media, “which is a real partner of the army in facing the terrorist war against the country.”

The army has been battling IS militants near the villages of Mahin and Hawarin villages in southeast Homs.

More than 250,000 people have been killed in the nearly five-year-old conflict, including dozens of local and foreign journalists.

On Saturday, Doctors Without Borders said a hospital near Damascus supported by the international medical charity was struck by missiles this week.

The hospital in the rebel-held town of Arbeen east of the Syrian capital was hit Thursday, approximately 30 minutes after the town came under aerial attack. Two missiles struck the entrance of the makeshift hospital, just as seven wounded people arrived for urgent treatment.

Two people were killed and six, including two medics, were wounded in the strike. The statement did not say who was responsible for the missile attack.

“MSF is appalled that a health structure and medical staff providing life-saving treatment to wounded victims of an indiscriminate bombing campaign are once again targeted,” Brice de le Vingne, Doctors Without Borders’ director of operations, said in a statement.

Deadly suicide bombings target Cameroon's Far North

© Reinnier Kaze, AFP | A picture taken on February 17, 2015 shows a Cameroonian soldier walking in the Cameroonian town of Fotokol, on the border with Nigeria.

A female suicide bomber killed five civilians, including the head of the small village of Leymarie near Fotokol, the governor of the Far North region, Midjiyawa Bakari, told AFP. Three other female attackers blew themselves up without causing any casualties.

Boko Haram has mounted numerous attacks in Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria this year and is turning the border region near Lake Chad into a war zone, the United Nations refugee agency said last month.

Boko Haram has waged a six-year campaign for an Islamist state in northeastern Nigeria. Neighbouring countries joined an offensive against the group this year and the conflict spilled across their borders, displacing tens of thousands of people.

Boko Haram used Cameroon’s impoverished Far North to stockpile supplies and recruits until the government cracked down last year.

Cameroon is also in an 8,700-strong regional force led by Nigeria against the militants, expected to be operational by the end of the year. The United States is sending military supplies and troops to the central African country to aid the fight.

al-Qaeda’s Strength in Africa

Mali security officers show a jihadist flag that belonged to the hotel attackers (Reuters)

A group of terrorist gunmen assaulted the Raddison Blu Hotel, a luxury hotel in Mali’s capital city Bamako, on Friday morning, taking hundreds of hostages were taken. The hotel was hosting a Mali “peace process” conference, and so a number of diplomats were including among the hostages, along with numerous other guests and employees.

Malian troops swept through the hotel room by room, floor by floor, freeing hostages and pursuing the gunmen. They found the floors littered with the bodies of Malians and foreign visitors, including a Belgian government official. At least 20 people were killed.

At least two different terror groups have claimed responsibility on social media for the attack, Al Murabitoon and Ansar al-Din. Both of them are splinter groups associated with Al-Qaeda on the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

The fact that different groups are claiming credit on social media shows that, like many acts of terrorism including those in Paris this year, the terrorism has no strategic purpose other than as publicity and recruiting tools. CNN and Washington Post and Time

Mali hotel terror attack highlights al-Qaeda’s strength in Africa

Despite claims by the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) to be a worldwide caliphate, Friday’s attack in Mali shows that not only is al-Qaeda far from dead, but in fact may be getting energized by the recent successes of ISIS.

According to a US military assessment, ISIS has little or no influence in West Africa, as compared to al-Qaeda. According to Army Gen. David Rodriguez, chief of U.S. Africa Command:

The Islamic State does not have that kind of impact down in that area. [The Mali attackers are] probably someone associated with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb because, again, that is where they have the reach.

According to Rodriguez, ISIS’s influence in Africa is largely limited to Libya. However, ISIS is “creeping” into Egypt, primarily in the Sinai Peninsula, according to Rodriguez.

The ISIS-linked terror group Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis (ABM – Ansar Jerusalem – Champions of Jerusalem), which has changed its name to Al Wilayat Sinai (Province of Sinai), is believed to be responsible for the downing of Russia’s Metrojet Flight 9268 passenger plane over Sinai in Egypt.

Apart from that, al-Qaeda linked terror groups are surging in Africa. In East Africa, the primary terror group is al-Qaeda linked al-Shabaab, headquartered in Somalia, but recently reaching out into Kenya and Ethiopia.

But the “most deadly terrorist group in the world” is neither the whole of ISIS nor al-Qaeda. According to the Global Terrorism Index from the Institute for Economics and Peace it is Boko Haram, which has exceeded ISIS write large and all other groups in “murder, torture and rape,” and in the number of terror-related deaths. Boko Haram recently changed its name to Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) and is now a subsidiary of ISIS. The study in question was conducted before that change, however.

Boko Haram has waged an insurgency in Nigeria since 2009 in its bid to create a mini-state under Islamic law. It has forced at least 2.6 million people from their homes, killing at least 17,000 people and abducting hundreds, including the 276 schoolgirls kidnapped in Chibok village in April last year that prompted an international outcry. As of April, a year after their kidnap, 219 of the Chibok schoolgirls remained missing. A group of around 50 managed to escape. Military Times and Sun News Online (Lagos) and Washington Post

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Mali, Bamako, Raddison Blu Hotel, Al Murabitoon, Ansar al-Din, Al-Qaeda on the Islamic Maghreb, AQIM, Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh, David Rodriguez, Egypt, Sinai, Ansar Jerusalem, Ansar Bayt al Maqdis, ABM, Champions of Jerusalem, Sinai Province, Al Wilayat Sinai, Metrojet Flight 9268, Al-Shabaab, Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Boko Haram, Nigeria

Paris Attacks Made Me Doubt, Says Archbishop

Justin Welby had lived in Paris for five years with his wife

Justin Welby said he reacted with "profound sadness" at the events and was left asking where God was in the French victims' time of need.

He told BBC Songs Of Praise: "Yes. Saturday morning - I was out and as I was walking I was praying and saying: 'God why - why is this happening? Where are you in all this?' and then engaging and talking to God. Yes, I doubt."

When asked what his reaction to the attacks was, he said: "Like everyone else - first shock and horror and then a profound sadness - and in my family's case, that is added to because my wife and I lived in Paris for five years.

"It was one of the happiest places we have lived and to think of a place of such celebration of life seeing such suffering is utterly heart-breaking."

A bombing campaign against Islamic State was launched after the events, but the Archbishop warned against a potentially damaging instant reaction.

"Two injustices do not make justice. If we start randomly killing those who have not done wrong, that is not going to provide solutions. So governments have to be the means of justice.

"The Bible tells us that they are put there by God with the sword for justice, but they also have to lead us into a place where peace can be established."

he Archbishop said the way Islamic State terrorists had distorted their faith to the extent they believe they are glorifying their God is "one of the most desperate aspects of our world today".

"Religion is so powerful in the way humans behave that it has always been a tool used by the wicked to twist people into doing what they want them to do.

"But just because someone believes something deeply wrong does not mean that they are right in some way because they put God in it."

U.K.'s Own 'DARPA' Will Pour £165 Million Into Cyber Security

The British government has announced a bold series of new programs to boost its cyber security defences, including a new, £165 million ($250 million) fund that will see the government buy or invest in cyber security startups. Britain will also double its public spending on fighting cybercrime to £1.9 billion a year by 2020. The extra money will be spent on protecting the British public’s online assets as well as public infrastructure like hospitals and electricity grids, Chancellor George Osborne said in a speech at GCHQ, Britain’s main intelligence service focused on cyber crime.

The £165 million Defence and Cyber Innovation Fund will “support innovative procurement across both defence and cyber security,” Osborne said. “It will mean that we support our cyber sector at the same time as we need to solve investing in solutions to the hardest cyber problems that government faces.”

“The threats to our country in cyber space come from a range of places – from individual hackers, criminal gangs, terrorist groups and hostile powers,” he added.

The new program is similar in its intent to DARPA, the American Department of Defence agency that provides funding to startups who are creating cutting-edge technology, whose intellectual property can then be shared with the U.S. government. Among the projects DARPA is funding are jetpacks that can help soldiers run as fast as Olympic athletes and implants known as ‘neuroprosthetics’ that can treat memory loss.

Britain’s fund is dwarfed in its scope by DARPA, which had a budget of nearly $3 billion for 2015.  It may also end up being more closely aligned with another U.S. funding agency known as In-Q-Tel, based in Arlington, Virginia.

While DARPA covers a broad range of technologies including robotics and health, In-Q-Tel targets software startups and particularly those focused on data analytics, with the aim of  supporting America’s Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence services.

Since it was created in 1999, In-Q-Tel has reportedly funded 200 companies with investments in the $1 million to $3 million range.

British startups with a focus on cyber security and analytics software will see the new public funding as great news for their fundraising prospects, at a time where Silicon Valley’s leading venture capitalists have warned that the days of privately funding startups at ultra-high valuations are coming to an end and private funding may be harder to come by.

Eileen Burbidge, a partner at venture capital firm Passion Capital and advisor to Cyber London, a local incubator for cyber security startups, says she and local firms have been waiting for ”years” for a funding announcement like this from the government, one that emulates the likes of In-Q-Tel.

“Devil is always in the details but I’m genuinely encouraged to see emphasis and investment committed to public and private sector collaboration,” Burbidge said.