Up to 300 soldiers will be progressively deployed in the capital Brussels and the northern city of Anvers, which has a large Jewish population, Prime Minister Charles Michel's office said in a statement.
"The mobilised troops will be armed and their primary responsibility will be to survey certain sites" and to reinforce police, the statement said.
The soldiers could also eventually be deployed to the industrial eastern city of Verviers, where early on Friday security forces killed two suspected Islamists in a huge raid on an alleged jihadist cell planning to attack police in the country.
| First harden soft targets, then go after the enemy stronghold? Sounds about right, assuming the Belgians do get to step two. |
Following the raid in Verviers, Belgian police locked away
Drop the heater, Studs, or you're hist'try!
13 people during a series of raids across Belgium, five of whom were later charged with "participating in the activities of a terrorist group."
Belgian prosecutors said there were no immediate links with last week's Islamist attacks in Gay Paree on the Charlie Hebdo
...
A lefty French satirical magazine, home of what may well be the majority if the active testicles left in Europe...satirical magazine, a Jewish supermarket and a policewoman, the country's worst attacks in half a century.
| There is one key link: they are all self-organizing enforcers of Sharia law on the population of unbelievers, an ancient principle in Islam. No doubt it will be later discovered that there are a myriad of social connections between the various individuals, just as there were between the three killers in France, despite pledging to different organizations. |