Islamic State threat to Europe ‘more urgent’ than feared

BRUSSELS - Police foiled another terrorist plot by arresting a man Thursday believed to be at 'an advanced stage” of planning an attack in France, the French foreign minister said.

The suspect, a French citizen, was at a high level of a terrorism network, said Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, and the arrest was the culmination of an investigation that lasted weeks.

But Cazeneuve said there was no apparent link to this week's Brussels attacks.

'The individual questioned, a French national, is suspected of high-level involvement in this plan. He was part of a terrorist network that planned to strike France,” Cazeneuve said.

After the arrest, French intelligence authorities raided a home in a Paris suburb as the investigation unfolded.

The French arrest came as the Belgian prosecutor's office announced six arrests there as part of its investigation into Tuesday's attacks that killed 31 and injured 270. Belgian authorities have been scrambling to track down suspects who remain at large as they confront accusations they had failed to disrupt the plot.

It was not immediately clear whether those arrested had participated in the attacks at Brussels Airport and on a subway car.

Belgian authorities have not confirmed how many attackers were involved in the plot and how many people are on the loose as it became clearer that the Brussels attacks had links to the November massacre in Paris that killed 130.

A top European security official warned Thursday that the threat of Islamic State attacks is greater than previous assessments, underscoring calls for tighter security.

Rob Wainwright, chief of Europol, said the terrorist group has adopted a 'more aggressive” posture toward Europe and that security authorities were focused on about 5,000 suspects who had become radicalized in Europe and traveled to Syria to fight. Many have returned.

'We are faced by a more dangerous, a more urgent security threat from so-called Islamic State,” Wainwright told the BBC. 'It threatens not just France and Belgium but a number of European countries at the same time. ... It is certainly the most serious threat we have faced in at least a decade.”

Wainwright spoke ahead of an emergency session of European security chiefs in Brussels. European leaders have been criticized for not acting more quickly to integrate security strategies and were under pressure to produce results.

The bloodshed struck directly at 'the liberty upon which the European project was built,” Belgium's prime minister, Charles Michel, said in a speech to mark a national day of mourning.

Police pressed ahead with a manhunt for a suspected accomplice who is believed to have fled Tuesday's attack at the Brussels Airport.

The French newspaper Le Monde and the Belgian broadcaster RTBF reported that video monitors had captured images of another possible accomplice, who is believed to have slipped away on the Brussels subway. The report could not be immediately confirmed.

Criticism also has been leveled at the Dutch government, which Thursday released a letter from Turkish authorities announcing their decision to deport Ibrahim el-Bakraoui to the Netherlands in July, after he was apparently detained at the Turkey-Syria border.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had said Wednesday that Turkey explicitly warned Dutch authorities that Bakraoui was 'a foreign terrorist fighter.”

But the letter does not explain why Bakraoui was deported, and Dutch Justice Minister Ard van der Steur said Turkey did not explain its decision. Because Bakraoui was not on any watch lists at the time and because he had a valid Belgian passport, van der Steur said, 'there was no reason to take any action.”

On Tuesday, Bakraoui detonated a suitcase full of nails, screws and powerful explosives at the Brussels airport, killing himself in the process, authorities said.

His younger brother, Khalid el-Bakraoui, 27, had even been subject to an international arrest warrant. The Belgian prosecutor's office said Thursday that the warrant was issued Dec. 11 and that he was wanted for using a false name to rent an apartment in Belgian that was used as a hideout for the Paris attackers.