Seven shootings in five days and police station attack. Brussels has established crisis command, but the comparison with Antwerp does not hold up

Seven shootings in five days, an attack with a military weapon on a police station in Anderlecht and a gunman with an automatic weapon outside a pizzeria pushed Brussels to do what the city had only done so far on New Year's Eve: it appointed one commander over six police zones. On Wednesday evening the regional security council met, the federal interior minister spoke of a "situation of national urgency" and reminded mayors that they can declare a curfew in the most dangerous districts. On the same day, however, the public broadcaster VRT checked the argument that one of the mayors used to justify his request, namely that Brussels has fewer investigators compared to Antwerp, and the numbers did not support him.

Five Days of Escalation

That 2026 would break in Brussels was already visible before the wave. The public broadcaster VRT counted 57 shootings in the city in the first seven months of the year and warned that a new record was looming. VRT NWS ↗

The turning point came on the night of August 22, when two men fired on a police station in Anderlecht with a heavy weapon and escaped on an electric scooter. "Tonight a red line was crossed," Jurgen De Landsheer, head of the South police zone, which includes Anderlecht, Saint-Gilles and Forest, said to VRT. VRT NWS ↗

The following night there were two shootings in Saint-Gilles within ten hours and one of the stray bullets flew into an apartment where someone was sleeping at the time. The local mayor Jean Spinette then for the first time quantified his request for eighty additional police officers, justifying it by saying that "Brussels deserves respect". Het Laatste Nieuws ↗

By Monday morning there were more shootings in Saint-Gilles and Molenbeek and the Brussels police chief spoke of the fifth shooting in three days. On Monday evening a man fired at a pizzeria in Saint-Gilles with an automatic weapon. The German FAZ, which devoted a separate report from Brussels to the topic, counted seven shootings in five days by Wednesday. This chronology does not list every incident individually, but the points that triggered a political response. La Libre ↗

One Day, Three Layers of Command

Brussels mayors agreed on Wednesday that a single commander would be placed over six police zones in the region. Michel Goovaerts, head of the Brussels-Main City/Elsene zone, took on the role of "Gold Commander", which he had previously held only during New Year's Eve nights. Dog handlers, special intervention units, i.e., the operational capacities of the zones, not their entire leadership, are to be placed under a unified command structure. VRT NWS ↗

In the evening, Boris Dilliès, chairman of the regional government, called the regional security council to the headquarters of the safe.brussels agency. Federal ministers of the interior and justice Bernard Quintin and Annelies Verlindenová, Brussels' royal prosecutor Julien Moinil, national drug commissioner Ine Van Wymerschová, and mayors attended. The meeting produced a package that mixed technology with repression: twenty mobile cameras in tense neighborhoods, reinforcements for the Midi police zone, which covers Anderlecht, Forest and Saint-Gilles, a regional drug commissioner from September, and a reminder that municipalities can introduce a curfew or areas accessible only to residents. The reinforcements for the Midi zone were agreed to by Brussels Mayor Philippe Close on behalf of the mayors' conference. La Libre ↗

Quintin wants to get the topic onto the agenda of the National Security Council and speaks of a new quality of violence. "The fact that they are shooting at a police station shows how serious the situation is. This new dimension of violence, with military weapons, requires us to deploy all necessary resources," he declared. By October, the dispatch centers of all Brussels zones are to be consolidated under one roof, and the ARGOS unit, which analyzes camera footage and recognizes license plates, is also to be strengthened. Czech media, meanwhile, informed already in the morning that police had seized military-type weapons. Hospodářské noviny ↗

At the federal level, the minister wants mandatory scooter registration in addition to reinforcements. It sounds like an administrative trifle next to military weapons, but it fits into the same operational logic: according to initial findings, the attackers from the Anderlecht station fled on a scooter. De Morgen ↗

Numbers That Did Not Confirm the Complaint

Political pressure on the federal government was based on a comparison with Antwerp. "Antwerp and Brussels, that's the same city. We need to get the same support as Antwerp, with reinforcements to federal judicial police," said Jean Spinette, mayor of Saint-Gilles, in a VRT report. The editorial team requested figures from federal police and came to the opposite conclusion. According to them, Brussels federal judicial police had 727 employees, Antwerp province 507. With local police, Brussels comes out with at least 558 investigators compared to at least 495 in Antwerp, for a total of at least 1,285 people compared to 1,002. VRT NWS ↗

Moreover, the coalition agreement of the current federal government states that Antwerp's federal judicial police should be brought to at least the level of Brussels'. That is exactly the opposite of what the complaint says. Suspicion that Antwerp is being favored has appeared in Belgian debate since Antwerp Mayor Bart De Wever became Prime Minister and formally retained his position in Antwerp. After being confronted with the figures, Spinette clarified that he meant the government's intention to reinforce precisely the Antwerp force, and added that both zones need resources. "It's a shame. We need a national security plan," he said.

The same research also brought out the extent of the problem, which is otherwise not visible in the reporting. According to it, Brussels federal judicial police worked nearly 465,000 hours last year on the drug agenda, and in Brussels itself they recorded 101 shootings in a year. Spinette requested eighty additional police officers, and after Wednesday's meeting there was talk of forty reinforcements from the federal level.

What the Slovak Reader Saw From It

Slovak and Czech media covered the event correctly, but stopped at its first layer. Hospodárske noviny wrote about it at 10:58, Czech Hospodářské noviny at 11:51 and iDNES at 12:47 with the detail that people had to take cover even in a pizzeria. All three texts are based on the fact that shooting occurred repeatedly in Brussels and that it involves drug gangs. Hospodárske noviny ↗

But everything substantial happened in the afternoon and evening. Unified command, security council, "national urgency", curfews and the verification of the disputed complaint all came after the local editorial teams had abandoned the topic. In our monitoring of Slovak and Czech sources through midnight, not a single article appeared about the Belgian measures. The only Slovak follow-up that came out in the evening belonged to a website outside the list of trusted sources and reduced the whole thing to a single sentence about migrants.

Migration is in Belgian debate, but not as its main or only axis. Quintin's federal list also includes places in closed centers for people without documents and consequent procedures for illegal residence. Alongside this in the same list are mandatory scooter registration, prison capacities, closed facilities for juveniles and expanded deployment of soldiers, forty-five of whom have been patrolling the Brussels metro and stations since April. La Libre editor-in-chief Dorian de Meeûs is calling for a crisis council in his Wednesday commentary in which, in addition to interior and justice, the departments of asylum and migration, youth assistance, health, and education would sit. La Libre ↗

Limits of this view

Sources disagree on the number of reinforcements. VRT mentions fifty federal police officers, while La Libre and De Standaard both report forty after evening talks. We were unable to close this gap, and it's possible the number was adjusted during the day or that federal reserve units are counted differently.

VRT itself points out that comparing cities is difficult because the context is different, and that both Brussels and Antwerp claim they lack sufficient personnel. Its figures refer to the state of the forces, not to how many investigators are actually working on the drug agenda, and the editorial team did not have exact numbers for local investigators. What is thus refuted is the comparison with Antwerp, not the general claim that Brussels is understaffed.

One must also acknowledge the linguistic dimension of the dispute. VRT is a Flemish public broadcaster, and the Brussels versus Antwerp comparison has a communal dimension in Belgium. La Libre is a French-speaking liberal newspaper. Neither of them is a neutral arbiter in a dispute where French-speaking liberals, socialists, and the Flemish N-VA stand opposed. Flemish outlets De Standaard and Het Laatste Nieuws block our access, so we cite from them only what literally appears in their own RSS headlines.

The political agreement that the measures required did not last even a day. After the attack on the station, Ahmed Laaouej, head of Brussels socialists, called for more resources against organized crime, and Quintin pointed him to the PS's own record in Brussels. The brief truce between liberals and socialists was then ended by the sharp statement of MR leader Georges-Louis Bouchez, and the capital's security returned to a position of partisan dispute. La Libre ↗

Pressure from below continues. Brussels civic committees wrote in an open letter Wednesday that the "line has been crossed again," and demand immediate action from both federal and regional levels. VRT NWS ↗

German FAZ picked out a scene from the whole day that Belgian media also criticized: Mayor Spinette came with a camera to talk to dealers through a fence. "This won't work, guys, there's police all over here," he told them. FAZ ↗

Illustration: Belgian federal police vehicle at Brussels' North Station. Author S5A-0043, Wikimedia Commons, license CC BY 4.0.

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