BRUSSELS (AP) — Belgian police carried out raids throughout the tense capital, detaining 16 people as the city remained locked down under high alert Monday. In Paris, British Prime Minister David Cameron said he will ask for parliamentary approval for the U.K. to join airstrikes against Islamic State extremists in Syria.
Raids across Brussels capped a tense day with hundreds of troops patrolling and authorities hunting for one or more suspected extremists, including Salah Abdeslam, a fugitive since being named a suspect in the Nov. 13 Paris attacks.
It was eerily quiet in the old Ben Gurion Airport building in Tel Aviv on Saturday night, considering the bustle of vacationers flying out to Eilat. In fact, of the 500 people gathered, many of them were students spending the year after high school in Israel's yeshivas, seminaries, and assorted other programs. Still others were former neighbors of the Schwartz family, those who have made aliyah from the Boston suburb of Sharon, Mass., over the years—including this reporter.
Days ago, Ezra Schwartz, age 18, was just another one of the tens of thousands who spend their "gap year" after high school here in Israel. Until he was shot and killed by a member of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. On Nov. 19, a carful of yeshiva students including Schwartz was stuck in traffic. The day's agenda: dropping food to IDF soldiers and visiting Oz Vegaon, the park set up in Gush Etzion in memory of the three Jewish teens kidnapped and killed by Hamas last summer.
