THE twin explosions at Brussels main airport and another at a metro station on Tuesday left about 34 dead and 250 wounded. Belgium is observing a three-day national mourning. The Islamic State (IS) has claimed responsibility behind the attacks and warned that more would follow. As it appears two of the suspects as Belgian media said are brothers Khalid and Brahim el-Bakraoui who carried out the attacks. The RTBF broadcaster said police knew the pair for their criminal record. We mourn the untimely death of so many people and hope that the world will be safe from such menace to let people live in peace.
What appears quite shocking and becoming an ever growing challenge is the safety of the European and US nationals who are particularly falling targets of the IS outfits. Their anger appears to follow mainly from the aerial bombing of the IS bastion in Iraq and Syria by Western coalition in which many civilians are also being killed. After the Paris massacres and shoot out in the USA by IS suspects killing scores of people, the fresh attacks in Brussels has come as a reminder that the IS menace may take time to eliminate and for that the unity of all nations and their working together with Arab countries where IS has its roots must be achieved. This is a kind of urban warfare and IS militants so far showed they are capable to hit any soft target. They operate as sleepers’ cells, which hit sensitive targets using local resources and manpower around them.
Khalid el-Bakraoui had used a false name to rent a flat in the Forest area of the Belgian capital where police killed a gunman in a shootout last week. It was during that raid that police found a fingerprint of Salah Abdeslam, the main suspect in the Paris terror attacks and he was later arrested in a raid in Brussels last Friday. It appears that the sleepers cell in Belgium quickly retaliated the arrest of Abdeslam and others last week showing they can do anything.
Now many hope that the arrest of Abdeslam may give significant lead to identify other members of the sleepers’ cells in Belgium and other European countries and it can help to minimize the danger of more such attacks.
We fear that the fresh attacks on European targets may create negative public opinion on rehabilitation of Syrian refugees and many others in European countries and in the USA. The IS may again use the Western attitude to make more recruits. It seems to be getting only complicated. Moreover hatred to Muslims in the western countries may flare up making their safety vulnerable with joblessness and other marginalization. Muslim tourists may also face various discrimination although they have no hand on the IS brutalities.
The world must find out who the IS fanatics are. They are surely working against Muslims in the West and the Muslim countries must be doing everything in collaboration with the Western powers to finish them. They are not Muslims, they are paid criminals.
