• published: 16 Jan 2015
• views: 249

SOURCE: AFPTVSHOTLIST VERVIERS, BELGIUM, 15 JANUARY 2015 SOURCE: AFPTV SOUNDBITE 1 - Marc Elsen, Mayor of Verviers (man, French, 16 sec) "The operation is over. It was well led by the federal police. It was a strong handed action but we can be happy to see the effictiveness of our police that is intended to reassure the population and show what they can do. Everything is under control." SOUNDBITE 2 - Marc Elsen, Mayor of Verviers (man, French, 16 sec) "We are going to reinforce the police operation in concert with the local and federal police in the city centre, near the police station, judicial institutions, places where we think there could be an attack." SOUNDBITE 3 - Marc Elsen, Mayor of Verviers (man, French, 15 sec) "At this stage nothing leads us to believe that there is a terrorist attack planned for Verviers." SOUNDBITE 4 - Thierry Hansens, Verviers resident (man, French, 26 sec) "I was at work at about 10 to 6 when my girlfriend rang me to say there was gunfire, at first I didn't believe her and thought it was a joke but then I could hear the gunfire and explosions over the phone and she told me not to come back because it was dangerous. But I came back but all the roads around were blocked off by the police and they didn't want to tell us anything or let us through, we didn't really know what was going on." VARIOUS IMAGES: - Street after the police operation /// ----------------------------------------------- AFP TEXT STORY Two dead in Belgium raid on 'Syria terror group' / Verviers (Belgium) - 15 January 2015 21:40 - AFP (Alex PIGMAN) / WRAP - UPDATE UPDATES throughout with death toll, press conference Belgian police on Thursday shot dead two suspected jihadists alleged to have been on the verge of a major terrorist attack in a new alarm for Europe days after 17 people were killed in Paris. Prosecutors said a third suspect was arrested after being wounded when militants with Kalashnikov assault rifles opened fire on police raiding on a property in Verviers, eastern Belgium. Police also conducted 10 searches in Brussels and its suburbs in an operation that came on the heels of last week's Islamist attacks on Charlie Hebdo magazine and a Jewish supermarket in Paris. "This operational cell of about ten people, some of whom had returned from Syria, was on the point of launching significant terrorist attacks in Belgium," Thierry Werts of the Belgian federal prosecutor's office told a press conference in Brussels. "During the search, certain suspects immediately opened fire at special forces of the police with automatic weapons. They opened fire for several minutes. Two suspects were killed and a third was arrested." No police or civilians were hurt in the operation in Verviers, a city with a large Muslim population close to the German border some 125 kilometres (70 miles) from Brussels, prosecutors said. Belgian authorities later raised the terror alert for official buildings to its second highest level, saying that the planned attack targeted police. In video footage shown on Belgian television, gunshots and explosions could be heard for several minutes and a blaze apparently erupts in the property. Werts said that "even after one of the suspects was lying on the ground injured, he continued to fire." "I heard a sort of explosion, followed by several gunshots," one local resident told local media RTBF. "For the moment, I cannot tell you any more because I don't dare go out to see what is happening." Another local resident said "machineguns were firing for about 10 minutes." A third witness said he saw two young men apparently of North African origin "dressed all in black carrying a bag of the same colour," adding that the pair looked terrified. - Jihadist networks - Some 325 people have left Belgium to fight with the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, according to officials, giving the country the highest per capita number of residents becoming jihadists in Europe. In May 2014, a suspected Islamist shot four people dead at the Jewish Museum in Brussels. Frenchman Mehdi Nemmouche, who had been in Syria, has been charged with murder. The men targeted in a former bakery in Verviers had been under surveillance since returning from Syria a week ago and were believed to be about to spring an attack, prosecutors said. Prosecutors said they'd found "no link at this stage" to the Paris attacks. But earlier Thursday, investigators said they suspect a Belgian man could have supplied Jewish supermarket gunman Amedy Coulibaly with his weapons. The suspect, Neetin Karasular, had bought a car belonging to Coulibaly's partner Hayat Boumeddiene, who has since fled France, apparently reaching Syria. Karasular handed himself into police on Tuesday, saying he had been in contact with Coulibaly in recent months and had tried to "swindle" the Frenchman over the car deal, but was scared after the Paris attacks. "The issue of weapons is under investigation,"