Authorities cancel New Year’s Eve celebrations in Brussels

Two people have been arrested in Belgium on suspicion of planning attacks in Brussels during the holidays, the federal prosecutor’s office said Tuesday.

Authorities in Paris, with an eye on security following the November attacks, are shortening a New Year video light show at the Arc de Triomphe at midnight on Thursday and cancelling a firework display to keep crowds down.

Mr Mayeur said 100,000 people had attended last year’s celebrations and it would be impossible for police to check everyone if a similar number turned out this year.

Superintendent Andy Morgan, silver commander for BTP, said: “New Year’s Eve will undoubtedly be one of the busiest nights of the year for the emergency services and we will have officers on the ground at train and Tube stations across London”.

“They are suspected of being affiliated with the Islamic State and were planning an attack on the New Year in Ankara”, an official said, asking not to be named.

The raids stem from an investigation into a gang called the Kamikaze Riders, according to Flanders News, which reports that some of the group’s members “apparently sympathize with IS or al-Qaeda”. The group recruited fighters for the Islamist cause in Syria and has been designated a terrorist organization in Belgium.

The intensifying worldwide fight against Islamic State, combined with the Turkish government’s deepening fight with Kurdish insurgents, has created more concern in the country about rising security risks.

November’s gun and bomb attacks in the city killed 130 people and at least one of the suspected attackers remains on the run.

Four other people were questioned in the raids and released without charge.

Meanwhile US authorities are monitoring investigations overseas of alleged plots by Islamic State operatives or sympathizers to launch attacks over the New Year’s holiday period.

Authorities said celebrations would not be held after a plot to attack Brussels by militants during the holiday was disclosed. The streets of Kizilay and other central areas of Ankara, which is Turkey’s largest city after Istanbul, are typically crowded on the evening of December 31 as revelers gather to celebrate the arrival of a new year. Turkey has blamed IS, but no group has claimed the attack.

Two of the Paris suicide bombers, Brahim Abdeslam and Bilal Hadfi, had been living in Belgium.

Ongoing inquiry: Belgian officials have so far detained nine men in the Paris massacre.