There could be as many as 20 terror cells of between 120 and 180 people ready to strike in France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, a Western intelligence source has told CNN.
The source told CNN national correspondent Deborah Feyerick that European Union and Middle East intelligence agencies had identified an “imminent threat” to Belgium, and possibly also to the Netherlands.
Here are the latest developments related to the terror threat facing the West:
• Belgian federal prosecutor Eric Van der Sypt said 13 people had been arrested in a dozen anti-terror raids in Belgium, triggered because authorities thought the “threat of a terrorist attack was very imminent.” Two suspects were killed in a raid Thursday in Verviers.
• The suspected terror cell, which included people returning from Syria, planned to target police officers, Van der Sypt said. Police said they recovered weapons, bomb-making materials and police uniforms in the overnight raids.
• Belgium has put 150 troops on standby for possible anti-terror operations.
• At least a dozen people were detained in the Paris region overnight in connection with last week’s shootings in Paris, the city prosecutor’s office said.
• The City Hall in the French town of Reims, about 90 miles northeast of Paris, said that a police operation had taken place and that it involved gunfire. Additional details were not immediately available.
• Two men in their early 40s were arrested in Berlin on suspicion of links to ISIS, police said. They did not appear to have been planning attacks in Germany. Berlin police spokesman Stefan Redlich said the investigation had started a year ago and the police operation had been planned for several weeks.
• The Netherlands said it was not raising its terror threat level, currently at “substantial,” the second-highest level. “That means there is a realistic threat, but no concrete or specific information of an attack in the Netherlands,” said Edmond Messchaert, a government spokesman.
Following up on Paris attacks
European counterterrorism agencies have been scrambling to identify and thwart potential threats after the deadly attacks in Paris last week, in which 17 people were killed.
Security services are also working to track those associated with the attackers: brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi and Amedy Coulibaly.
Neetin Karasular, a suspected Belgian trafficker in weapons who met with Coulibaly’s widow, Hayat Boumeddiene, is now in custody, Karasular’s attorney, Michel Bouchat, told CNN on Friday.
Karasular has been charged with association with wrongdoers and offenses relating to firearms, in a case handled by the local public prosecutor’s office in Charleroi, Belgium. But his attorney said his arrest was not connected to the other Belgian raids.
Coulibaly, who attacked a kosher supermarket in Paris last Friday and demanded that police end their siege of the Kouachi brothers, pledged allegiance to ISIS.
However, Cherif and Said Kouachi, the men who French authorities say carried out last week’s deadly shooting at the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, are believed to have had links to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. AQAP has claimed responsibility for the magazine attack.
A European counterterrorism official told CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank that there were indications that ISIS leadership had directed returnees from Iraq and Syria to launch attacks on European soil in revenge for airstrikes in Syria and Iraq.
The official cited France, the United Kingdom and Belgium as countries facing a particular threat and said counterterrorism agencies in Germany are also on high alert.
Several European nations, including the United Kingdom, France, Belgium and the Netherlands, are participating in the air campaign against ISIS in Iraq.
