Belgium on peak threat alert - Brussels on guard while Parisians reflect on bloodshed

Soldiers and police patrol the streets of Brussels where all stores had to close following the terror alert level being elevated to 4. Photo / Getty Images

Belgium has warned its citizens of "serious and imminent" threat and to avoid crowded areas after raising attack alert to its highest level ever.
The move was made in Brussels after a meeting of top ministers, police and security services.
"The advice for the population is to avoid places where a lot of people come together, like shopping centres, concerts, events or public transport stations wherever possible," a spokesman for the Government's crisis centre said. Brussels on guard while Parisians reflect on last week’s bloodshed.
The level for the whole country was raised a week ago after the Paris attacks to level three of four, implying a "possible or probable" threat. Previously, only certain sites, such as the US embassy, were at level three.
A statement on the crisis centre's website called on officials to cancel major events and football matches over the weekend.
Metro services in Brussels were cancelled over the weekend, as the Government increased its security presence in the city.

Meanwhile, a week after the deadliest attacks on France in decades, shell-shocked Parisians honoured the 130 victims with candles and songs yesterday, knowing at least one suspect is still at large and fearing other militants could be slipping through Europe's porous borders.
Prosecutors said they had determined through fingerprint checks that two of the seven attackers who died in the bloodshed entered Europe through Greece on October 3. One carried a Syrian passport naming him as Ahmad Al-Mohammad, although it's unclear whether it was authentic.
The five other attackers who died had links to France and Belgium. One of the seven dead has not been identified and a manhunt is under way for suspect who escaped, Salah Abdeslam, 26. French police stopped Abdeslam the morning after the attacks at the Belgian border but let him go.
French police official Jean-Marc Falcone was unable to say if Abdeslam, whose brother, Brahim, blew himself up in the attacks, could be back on French territory.
The suspected ringleader, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was killed in a pre-dawn raid on Wednesday in an apartment in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, along with Hasna Aitboulahcen, a 26-year-old woman who said she was his cousin. Prosecutors said that a third person was killed in the raid but did not release the identity.
They also said Aitboulahcen had not blown herself up with a suicide vest, as initially believed, which suggests the body parts collected after the raid belonged to the third, unidentified, person.
Meanwhile in Brussels, European interior and justice ministers vowed to tighten border controls to make it easier to track jihadis with European passports travelling to and from war zones in Syria.
"We must move swiftly and with force," French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said. "Europe owes it to all victims of terrorism and those who are close to them."
Cazeneuve said the 28-nation bloc must move forward on a long-delayed system for collecting and exchanging airline passenger information, data he said is vital "for tracing the return of foreign fighters" from Syria and Iraq.
Highlighting how easily Islamic militants seem to be able to move in and out of Europe, French officials say they don't know when and how Abaaoud, a 28-year-old Belgian of Moroccan descent, entered France.
They believed he was in Syria until receiving a tip-off he was in France.
Marking a week since the carnage, Parisians lit candles and paid tribute to the victims with silent reflection. Others decided enjoying themselves was the best way to defy the extremists. They sang and danced on Place de la Republique, where scores of people were killed, most in the attack on the Bataclan concert hall.
Demonstrations have been banned in the city since the attacks, but Parisians have been gathering all week to leave flowers, light candles and hold quiet vigils outside the attack sites.
France's Senate has voted to extend for three months a state of emergency, which expands police powers to carry out arrests and searches and allows authorities to forbid the movement of persons and vehicles at specific times and places. France's lower chamber has already approved the measure.
Hollande is also going to Washington and Moscow next week to push for a stronger international coalition against Isis.
Of the more than 350 people wounded in the attacks, scores are in critical condition. Prime Minister Manuel Valls said one more person has died, raising the death toll to 130, a tally that does not include any of the attackers.

Russia gives puppy to France

A puppy called Dobrynia has been offered by Russia to France to replace the police dog killed by a suicide bomber in Paris. Photo / Instagram

Russian police are giving a police dog to the French forces to express solidarity against terrorism.
The announcement was made on the Russian police Facebook page yesterday, two days after thousands of people paid tributes to Diesel, the 7-year-old Belgian Malinois shot during the raid in Saint-Denis on Wednesday.
The pup called Dobrynya after a legendary Russian hero will "replace Diesel and in solidarity with French people and the police in the fight against terrorism" states the post on Facebook.
In Russian folklore, Dobrynya is a knight who embodies the forces of military prowess and selflessness.
Diesel was shot dead as police raided a flat where Paris attacks mastermind Abdelhamid Abaaoud was in hiding.