By JERUSALEM POST STAFFBelgium authorities raided homes Wednesday and detained 14 suspects with links to a terrorist network that sent volunteers to Iraq, including a Belgian woman who allegedly carried out a suicide attack in Baghdad.
French police in the Paris region also arrested a 27-year-old Tunisian man suspected of having contacts with the Belgian cell, judicial officials said.
Belgian authorities "want to dismantle this network, which we knew was on our territory and which aimed to send volunteers for the jihad to the battlefield," federal police director Glenn Audenaert told reporters, referring to an Arabic word which among extremists can mean holy war in addition to its definition as the Islamic concept of the struggle to do good.
The dawn raids in Brussels and three other cities across the country involved more than 200 police officers and followed media reports that a Belgian woman had blown herself up in a Nov. 9 attack in Baghdad.