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Brussels extends terror alert, fourth suspect charged over Paris attacks

Brussels will stay at the highest security threat level for another week over fears of an imminent attack, the Belgian government said Monday, as authorities charged a fourth suspect in connection with the terror assaults in Paris.

France meanwhile launched its first strikes against Islamic State from a newly deployed aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean, as the country ramped up its fight against the jihadist group in response to the November 13 gun and suicide bomb attacks.

Separately, French police said they had found a suspected explosives belt in a Paris suburb where Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in the attacks and the subject of a massive manhunt in Belgium and France, was known to have been on the night of the atrocities.

On the third day of an unprecedented security lockdown in Brussels, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said the city would be kept under the maximum level four terror alert for another week, but that schools and the metro system would reopen from Wednesday.

“The threat remains serious and imminent,” Michel said, in the face of fears that the symbolic and institutional capital of Europe could face coordinated Paris-style attacks.

Michel said the army and armed police would remain on the streets in coming days and he advised people to stay away from crowded areas.

“We want to thank the people for their calm and understanding,” he said, adding the security level would be reviewed again next Monday.

A man who was arrested during a large police operation in Belgium late Sunday has been charged with involvement in the Paris atrocities, the federal prosecutor’s office announced.

The 15 other people who were arrested in the raids that brought the city to a standstill that night have been released.

A further six people were arrested on Monday morning, prosecutors said.

Two suspects, Mohammed Amri, 27, and Hamza Attou, 20, were charged last Monday on suspicion of helping Abdeslam escape to Brussels after the Paris attacks, while a third unnamed person faces charges of aiding him when he reached the city.

– ‘Explosive belt’ found –

In France, police said they had found a “belt that may resemble an explosive belt” in a dustbin in the southern Paris suburb of Montrouge, 10 days after the attacks in the capital that left 130 people dead.

Telephone data placed Abdeslam in the Montrouge area on the night of the attacks, a source close to the inquiry said.

French President Francois Hollande said his country was “at war” with the Islamic State jihadist group following the attacks, and on Monday planes based on the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier launched their first attacks against IS in Iraq and Syria.

As diplomatic efforts to tackle IS gathered pace, Hollande met British Prime Minister David Cameron in Paris in an effort to widen an international alliance against the extremist group.

“We will intensify our strikes, choosing targets that will do the most damage possible to this army of terrorists,” Hollande said, adding that NATO allies Britain and France had a “joint obligation” to strike at IS.

Cameron, who earlier laid a wreath at the Bataclan concert venue in Paris where 90 people died, said he supported France’s actions and added that “it’s my firm conviction that Britain should do so too.”

The British premier will make his case to parliament on Thursday for Britain to join sorties into Syria, in his latest bid to get lawmakers’ approval for the move. Britain has already joined US-led strikes in Iraq.

Cameron’s visit kicked off a week of frantic international diplomacy during which Hollande is set to meet all leader of all five permanent members of the UN Security Council in coming days.

He will hold talks with US President Barack Obama in Washington on Tuesday, before meeting Germany’s Angela Merkel on Wednesday and Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Thursday.

The UN Security Council last Friday authorised “all necessary measures” to fight IS.

– Biggest alert for two decades –

The web of fear from the Paris attacks has spread across Europe, especially to Belgium where some of the assailants had lived before the violence.

Soldiers have been deployed in Brussels on a scale unseen for at least two decades since the terrorism alert was raised to its highest level on Saturday.

With locals struggling to get to work by bus and bike, Interior Minister Jan Jambon conceded the level four security alert had clear costs and was disruptive but warned it must “continue as long as necessary.”

In the normally bustling historic Grande Place, a few bars and restaurants were open for business but it was hard going to get customers.

The European Union and NATO, which both have their headquarters in Brussels, said they would bolster security and urged non-essential staff to work from home.

“If I look over the past two decades at counter-terrorism actions here in Belgium, we have never seen such a scale of deployment as demonstrated last night,” Pieter Van Ostaeyen, an analyst on Islamic extremism, told AFP.

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