Two Men Arrested Over Alleged Terror Attack Plots in Europe 'to Avenge Gaza'

Police in Belgium and Germany have arrested two men suspected of planning terror attacks, in the latest European security scares linked to the conflict in Gaza.

Police in Belgium said they had arrested a 23-year-old Palestinian asylum seeker in the municipality of Anderlecht, near Brussels, on Wednesday after had allegedly threatened to carry out a terror attack.

Belgian authorities launched a manhunt the day before after a humanitarian organisation claimed the suspect told them that he wanted to “die like a martyr by explosion,” Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws reported, citing police sources. 

The man, named as Mohammed A., had learned that his family had been killed in the Israeli assault on Gaza, the newspaper reported.

On Tuesday police in the western German city of Duisburg arrested a 29-year-old man on suspicion of planning a terror attack. According to German news outlet Bild, the man aimed to drive into a pro-Israel demonstration with a truck. 

The man was arrested in a raid by a police special operations unit on his apartment in central Duisburg after receiving "indications of a possible attack scenario,” Essen police said in a statement. The tipoff was reportedly from a foreign security service.

The suspect, named in media reports as Tarik S., was a known Islamist radical who had joined ISIS in Syria in 2013 using the nom de guerre “Osama al-Almani,” or “Osama the German.” After his return to Germany three years later, he was arrested and later sentenced to five years in prison after being convicted for belonging to ISIS.

Western intelligence chiefs have warned of a rising threat from Islamist terrorism in the wake of the war between Gaza and Israel, which risks triggering radicalised individuals into acts of violence. Affiliates of Al Qaida and ISIS have also issued calls for their supporters to carry out attacks.

The most recent arrests are just the latest terror-related incidents in Europe, as tensions from the conflict resonate on the continent. 

Last week, a Tunisian failed asylum seeker shot dead two Swedes in the Belgian capital, Brussels, before he was shot dead by police the following morning. The gunman, Abdesalem Lassoued, had posted a video prior to the attack saying he was inspired by ISIS and had carried out the attack as “revenge in the name of Muslims.” 

Authorities said his targeting of Swedish victims indicated he was likely motivated by the high-profile Koran-burning incidents in that country, but that his expressions of support for the Palestinians on social media indicated the conflict in Gaza may also have played a role. On Tuesday, French authorities said they had arrested two men in the greater Paris region over possible links to Lassoued as part of an investigation into a suspected "criminal terrorist conspiracy.”

And on Friday, British newspaper The Telegraph reported that an asylum seeker had already carried out a suspected terror attack in the UK in order to “avenge” Gaza, but that the details of the attack were being suppressed for legal reasons.