<div><span style="font-size: 1rem;"><b>Belgian police today arrested four youths over messages they exchanged allegedly plotting a jihadist attack deemed “imminent enough to intervene”, a spokesman for the federal prosecutor’s office told AFP.</b></span><br></div><div><br></div><div>The four – three minors in their “late teens” and an adult man aged 18 – were arrested when police raided home addresses in the cities of Brussels, Ninove, Charleroi and Liege, the spokesman, Eric Van Der Sypt, said.</div><div><br></div><div>No weapons or explosives were found.</div><div><br></div><div>Police took away mobile phones and laptops for analysis, he said, confirming reports from Belgian media RTBF and HLN.</div><div><br></div><div>The messages the four exchanged on the internet about the alleged planned attack were “worrying enough to intervene, to do house searches”, Van Der Sypt said.</div><div><br></div><div>“It’s not that they were planning something tomorrow, but still imminent enough to intervene,” he said.</div><div><br></div><div>The relative youth of the suspects heightened authorities’ wariness.</div><div><br></div><div>“They’re very flexible. If somebody gives them a weapon, for example, things can go very, very fast. So we don’t want to take any risk,” the spokesman said.</div><div><br></div><div>“From the moment that we think that we have to intervene, even if we have not too much (evidence) afterwards, we prefer intervening in time.”</div><div><br></div><div>Police were questioning the four suspects and an investigating judge was to determine today or tomorrow what would ensue, he said.</div><div><br></div><div>Belgian authorities remain highly vigilant since the 2016 jihadist attacks by suicide bombers that killed 32 people in blasts at Brussels airport and the city’s metro system.</div><div><br></div><div>And in October last year, a Tunisian man shot dead two Swedish football fans in Brussels before being fatally shot by police.</div><div><br></div><div>The arrests today stemmed from a police operation looking into people deemed potentially violent and with links to Islamic extremism. - AFP</div><div><br></div><div>bnbd24/fas</div>