BREAKING: Terror Attack in Brussels

[Thanas]

2 explosions at the airport, one at a metro station. Allegedly words in Arabic being shouted before the explosion.
At least 10 dead in airport explosions.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2 ... ve-updates

[ray245]

Fuck.

[Thanas]

Speculation is that this is revenge for the arrest of the Paris attacker near Brussels a few days ago.

[ray245]

Speculation is that this is revenge for the arrest of the Paris attacker near Brussels a few days ago.

Isn't that too well planned for this to be a revenge attack?

[Thanas]

Not if a terror cell executed it.

Anyway, attacker at the airport was a suicide bomber.

[The Romulan Republic]

Horrible. My sympathy goes to the people of Brussels.

Unfortunately, I suppose we can look forward to another wave of xenophobia, anti-refugee sentiment, authoritarian restrictions, and increased popularity for far Right/Neo Nazi parties. You know, the usual knee-jerk response after this kind of thing.

Honestly, as horrific as the act is, its often the response to terrorism that does the most damage in the long run.

[Thanas]

Meanwhile the Russians are having a despicable go at it.

Chair of the Duma’s foreign policy committee Alexei Pushkov tweeted: “While (Nato chief Jens) Stoltenberg, is busy fighting the imaginary ‘Russian threat’ and putting troops in Latvia, under his nose in Brussels people are blown up.”

And more Russian schadenfreude came from foreign ministry spox Maria Zakharova, who reportedly said: “You can’t support terrorists in one part of the globe and not expect them to appear in others.”

Fuck them.

[Col. Crackpot]

Meanwhile the Russians are having a despicable go at it.

Chair of the Duma’s foreign policy committee Alexei Pushkov tweeted: “While (Nato chief Jens) Stoltenberg, is busy fighting the imaginary ‘Russian threat’ and putting troops in Latvia, under his nose in Brussels people are blown up.”

And more Russian schadenfreude came from foreign ministry spox Maria Zakharova, who reportedly said: “You can’t support terrorists in one part of the globe and not expect them to appear in others.”

Fuck them.

Seconded.
Condolences to the Belgian people and our Belgian friends and board members.

[Broomstick]

Speculation is that this is revenge for the arrest of the Paris attacker near Brussels a few days ago.

Isn't that too well planned for this to be a revenge attack?

When Salah Abdeslam was arrested a few days ago he stated that other attacks were planned. They may have had something like this in the works already and just used his arrest as an excuse. Or maybe this was planned all along.

I'd say it was a pity Abdeslam didn't blow himself up as originally planned in Paris, but it wouldn't have made a difference, there are clearly too many more where he came from.

If they've already got the suicide vests/whatever made up and the volunteers staging something like this isn't rocket science.

No doubt more solid information will come with a little time.

Honestly, as horrific as the act is, its often the response to terrorism that does the most damage in the long run.

That is indeed true.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Obviously too early for a reliable narrative of what happened, but sources so far seem to indicate that one of the bombs in the airport was a suicide bomber and the other was likely a luggage bomb. Detonated outside of security by a large crowd of people in the baggage check area.

[Honorius]

http://news.yahoo.com/belgiums-tihange- ... nance.html

The Tihange Nuclear Plant is being evacuated now. Not clear why.

Death Toll is up to 34 and 100 wounded. Seeing the shape of some of those being carried out, I can state that we may see more soon succumb to wounds depending on how well staffed the Belgian Hospitals are and their ability to take in the wounded. A mass causality event on this scale in Benton Harbor would swiftly overwhelm St. Joe, Watervliet, and even Bronson. My main go-tos in Medic 1. We would be pulling Ambulances from Indiana to help.

[Broomstick]

I always find these events in locations I have actually been at some point more disturbing. Granted, it's been over 30 years since I went through that airport and it's considerably changed. When I went through there it was popular because it was a heck of a lot cheaper than some other European airports like those in Paris and London, it was cheaper to fly into Brussels and then take a bus to Paris than to fly directly into France. I wonder if that's still the case? I wonder if the multi-national nature of the airport traffic was part of the reason for targetting it?

Reports are that victims making it to the hospitals alive are full of shrapnel. Which I suppose isn't too surprising, nails and fragments of stuff make great anti-personnel weapons. US media is showing only minimally edited footage - not even all bodies are pixelated, although the really mangled ones, and identifiable body parts, are blurred out. My preference is for the truth, although I also fully support the warnings that explicit video is about to be run so those who don't want to see it, or don't tolerate it, can choose to look away.

I expect the death toll to keep rising throughout the day. Injury total is up to 130 now.

[Wild Zontargs]

The Tihange Nuclear Plant is being evacuated now. Not clear why.

According to nuke plant workers elsewhere, probably a standard security precaution. They send home the janitors, administrators, etc. and just keep the skeleton operator crew that they use on the weekends. This way, the security guards have fewer people to monitor, and if shit goes wrong, there are fewer civvies in the crossfire.

Linky

I'm a senior reactor operator in the us.

My take on this, less people at the plant means less concerns that security has to worry about for accidentally shooting site employees if an attack did happen. This is a precaution and is a good one.

Also, less people coming to the plant means less potential insider threats to worry about.

Indeed, standard safety protocol if safety level 4 is activated in the nation. All non essential crew is removed and people comming in for shift changes are checked completely, cars stay outside etc. In this case the sites were already guarded by the military too.

[The Romulan Republic]

That's understandable. But the reports on it still make me cringe, because a bunch of people are going to read it and immediately think "Oh my God, nuclear attack!"

It'll drive the fear and hysteria level through the roof to have a nuclear plant evacuated, and that'll increase the likelihood of harsh, authoritarian reprisals against innocent people and of Right wing extremists benefiting off this.

Edit: Hell, I can pretty much guarantee that their will be conspiracy theories saying the nuclear plant was attacked and it was covered up, somehow.

[Thanas]

Update: 34 dead. Rising.


Isis has claimed responsibility.

[Ziggy Stardust]

I wonder if the multi-national nature of the airport traffic was part of the reason for targetting it?

For some reason I cannot find it now for the life of me, but a few days ago when the Paris attack suspect was arrested in Brussels there was an article floating around one of the major news sites about how, for some complicated series of reasons, Belgium/Brussels has become a bit of a hotbed of radical Islamist activity the past couple of years, facilitating organizations like ISIS founding cells there. That is, I think the multi-national nature of the airport traffic was more or less a bonus for them; they would have attacked any public place in any European city that they had some means of accessing, and it just so happens that Brussels was the place they had the best/most active network. That's the impression I've had from my scattered readings over the past several days.

[Broomstick]

By the way... a question occurs to me and I just know someone (like maybe Thanas) would know the answer:

Why was Brussels chosen as the location for both the headquarters of the European Union and the headquarters of NATO in Europe? It can't be just cheap airfare for the diplomats.

[Ziggy Stardust]

According to the BBC, a third unexploded bomb (or suicide vest ... details are understandably vague) and a Kalashnikov rifle were also found in the airport.

[Channel72]

I wonder if the multi-national nature of the airport traffic was part of the reason for targetting it?

For some reason I cannot find it now for the life of me, but a few days ago when the Paris attack suspect was arrested in Brussels there was an article floating around one of the major news sites about how, for some complicated series of reasons, Belgium/Brussels has become a bit of a hotbed of radical Islamist activity the past couple of years, facilitating organizations like ISIS founding cells there. That is, I think the multi-national nature of the airport traffic was more or less a bonus for them; they would have attacked any public place in any European city that they had some means of accessing, and it just so happens that Brussels was the place they had the best/most active network. That's the impression I've had from my scattered readings over the past several days.

Yeah exactly. I'm reading all these stupid journalists saying things like "this was clearly meant to be a direct attack on the EU itself" or "this attack was intended to strike at the heart of European institutions to send a message" or whatever. I mean, please - the fact is this attack or something like it was just the easiest shit that ISIS could pull off on short notice. They obviously have a huge presence in the Molenbeek area of Brussels. Even if this was planned well in advance, the target they chose is obviously more about logistics than sending some kind of message. Yeah, they want to send a message, obviously, but Brussels is just a much easier location for them to arrange attacks than other places, because they already have so many "safe houses" in Molenbeek. I guess they're just "lucky" that it happens to be near EU headquarters.

Also, and this is pure speculation on my part, I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out this attack was some kind of last minute "desperate" move, what with all the police crack-downs and arrests going on in Molenbeek. It might be that the "cell" responsible for this figured they would be raided and/or arrested any time now, so they were just like fuck it and scrambled to pull off the attack. Sadly, they were successful.

[Broomstick]

I didn't mean to imply by my question that the EU or NATO were targets, I doubt they were any more than the UN was a target on 9/11 when the World Trade Center was attacked. These guys were targeting "airport" and "train", not the international headquarters of variou institutions.

Nonetheless, I am reminded that the EU and NATO are headquartered in Belgium - I'm just curious as to the reason.

[Honorius]

I didn't mean to imply by my question that the EU or NATO were targets, I doubt they were any more than the UN was a target on 9/11 when the World Trade Center was attacked. These guys were targeting "airport" and "train", not the international headquarters of variou institutions.

Nonetheless, I am reminded that the EU and NATO are headquartered in Belgium - I'm just curious as to the reason.

My take is that its because of Antwerp. Being based there means good transportation network to go on from.

For NATO, close enough to the action in Germany, and far enough from easy airstrikes and where the SACEUR can oversee reinforcements, at least in theory.

[Welf]

For EU it is partly convinience, because it is in the middle of the core states from the 1950s, was cheap to live there and had multiple languages, and partly politically because it wasn't in the big member states France or Germany.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

So far it looks like there were 2 bombs at the airport, and another on the metro in the middle carriage of a 3-carriage train. The security footage shows the bombers wearing single gloves, it's assumed to conceal triggers/detonators. Apparently there were 3 of them at the airport- the third got away, leaving behind an AK-47 and a suicide vest/belt.

At least with them catching one of the Paris attackers alive by shooting him in the leg they can extract a great deal of info from him.

It's been said it was targeted because it was seen to be soft, inefficient communications between emergency response units, and of course because it was the heart of the EU.

[Honorius]

Bad Communication Kills

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Wednesday said that Turkey had previously deported one of the Brussels terror attackers and had notified Belgian authorities.

Turkey's Presidency identified the Brussels attacker who was deported by Turkey in June as Ibrahim El Bakraoui.

Speaking at a joint press conference with his Romanian counterpart Klaus Iohannis, President Erdoğan said that Turkey had caught one of the Brussels attackers in southeastern Gaziantep province in July 2015 and deported him, but was released as Belgium did not establish terror links with the suspect.

''Belgian embassy was notified on July 14, 2015 about the deportation of the attacker, who was later released in Belgium'' Erdoğan said and added that Belgium could not find terror links with the suspect, despite Turkey's warnings.

Erdoğan continued by saying that the Netherlands was also involved in the matter as the suspect was deported to the Netherlands at his own request and the Dutch authorities were also informed about the incident.

The president also underscored that it is crucial for the international community to take a determined stance against terrorism.

Turkey has consistently promoted to take a firm stance against terrorist groups, namely PKK, its Syrian offshoot YPG/PYD, left-wing Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C), and Daesh for their direct threats against its national security.

Explosions on Tuesday at the Brussels airport and a city subway center killed 34 people, including three suicide bombers, and wounded over 270 people.

A suspect being sought in the terrorist attack on the Brussels airport is still on the run, Belgian officials have said.

This article speaks for itself.

[Ziggy Stardust]

This article speaks for itself.

What exactly do you think the article is saying?

All I see is that almost a year ago Turkey deported one of the attackers (for reasons that aren't made clear in the article), but that Belgium at the time had no reliable evidence of his involvement with terror plots so they let him go. Without an actual description of the reasons Turkey detained and deported him, the evidence Belgium had available and the reasons they had for letting him go, it's literally impossible to make a reasoned statement about that article. Unless you have a source saying that Belgium actually had reliable evidence available at the time (and that there was any substantive reason to take Turkey's allegations seriously), then they just followed due process by letting him go. Which is what any functioning democracy should do, hindsight regardless.