BELGIUM:A full-scale security alert was in place across Belgium last night after 14 Islamic extremists were accused of plotting the jailbreak of a would-be al-Qaeda suicide bomber.
Police swarmed around Brussels, at the airport, stations and Christmas markets, after the suspects, with stocks of arms and explosives, were picked up in a series of raids.
They planned to free Nizar Trabelsi, a 37-year-old Tunisian jailed for planning a terrorist attack on US airbase personnel in the country.
He was arrested two days after the September 11th attacks.
"If a group with an extremist view of Islam were ready to use arms and explosives to release Mr Trabelsi, there is no guarantee that they would not use them for other ends," said a federal prosecutor's spokeswoman.
Belgium's agency for monitoring public threats has information "indicating that an attack could be in the works," prime minister Guy Verhofstadt told parliament.
"Other acts of violence are not to be excluded," the prime minister said.
Within hours of the arrests, police were out checking for suspicious packages and bags in the capital's Grand Place, where a huge Christmas tree was set up.
The interior ministry urged people to report anything suspicious.
The measures were expected to stay in place at least until after New Year's Day.
Trabelsi, sentenced four years ago to the maximum 10 years in prison, has been held in a high-security unit at Lantin jail, 95km (60 miles) east of Brussels.
He had admitted planning to drive a car bomb into the cafeteria at Kleine Brogel, a Belgian airbase where about 100 American military personnel are stationed.
Trabelsi, who said that he intended to kill American soldiers, says he met al-Qaeda head Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and asked to become a suicide bomber.
After his arrest, police discovered the materials for a huge bomb in the back of a Brussels restaurant.
The federal prosecutor's office said today's suspects were planning to free the terrorist.
"Trabelsi would be helped by a group of people, driven by an extremist vision of Islam," the prosecutor's office said.
The US embassy issued an alert to US citizens living or travelling in Belgium, advising them to maintain a high level of vigilance, especially in crowded public places.
Its statement said it had "no information to indicate that US citizens or facilities are an intended target". -