Brussels In Lockdown After Terror Strikes

Pic: Henri Sivonen

Brussels airport is closed and airports around the world are on alert after a terrorist attack left at least 30 dead this morning.

Officials have shut down all public transport in Brussels and the Belgian Crisis Centre is telling the population to “Stay where you are.” 

All flights and Eurostar trains to Belgium have been cancelled. Starwood said this morning that all of its hotels in the city were in lockdown in light of the attack.

In the United States, security has been beefed up at the airports and at the World Trade Center. 

In the Netherlands, police have stopped a train from Brussels to Amsterdam at a station one stop from Amsterdam’s Schipohol Airport as a precaution. 

Hoofddorp station in the Netherlands, which is on the same train line as Amsterdam Centraal railway station, has also been evacuated and sealed off after a passenger on a train between the two cities was acting suspicious and an unattended package was found on platform. 

Delta Air Lines released a statement confirming the safety of its crew and ground employees at the airport, and noting that flight DL80 from Atlanta to Brussels landed safely at the airport. It was working on a plan to safely deplane passengers away from the main gates. 

Delta’s other flight, DL42 from New York to Brussels, has been diverted to Amsterdam. 

“The fact that travel and transit nodes were the object of this violence naturally has our full attention.”

— U.S. Travel Association president and CEO Roger Dow

United Airlines had two arrivals at the airport this morning. The first, Flight 950 from Washington Dulles arrived at 7:01 a.m. and customers deplaned normally at the gate. The second, flight 999 from Newark Liberty, was rerouted to a remote location and customers and crew have deplaned.  
 
Trafalgar Tours CEO Gavin Tollman told TMR that “no Trafalgar guests were in Brussels at the time of these events” and that it was making arrangements for two of its itineraries scheduled to stop in Brussels today, to bypass the city.

“They will be going by ferry from Dover to Calais and then proceed to Amsterdam via coach…Our primary concern is the safety and welfare of our guests and team. We will continue to monitor the situation very closely,” he said.

In a statement, U.S. Travel Asociation president and CEO Roger Dow said that the American travel community is “outraged and saddened by the attacks.”

“The fact that travel and transit nodes were the object of this violence naturally has our full attention. Those who would do harm to the Western world are a deranged minority and should be treated as such,” he said.

The attack
Three explosions rang out around the capital city of Europe early on Tuesday—two at Brussels International Airport and one at a subway station. 

The airport attacks began at around 8 a.m. with a blast near the airport’s check-in counters, before the security checkpoints that might have identified the terrorists. An hour later, an explosion occurred in a subway station in Maalbeek, near the base of the European Union.

According to Belgian federal prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw, at least one of the two explosions at the airport was a suicide bombing. 

Belgian news reports at least 34 dead, 20 in the subway attack and 14 at the airport. Police found an assault rifle next to a dead attacker at the airport.  

Cities around the world have stepped up their protection efforts as Paris, London and New York have bolstered security around their transit hubs and elsewhere. “We are at war,” the French prime minister, Manuel Valls, said.

Brussels is Europe’s capital city; its airport connects to 226 destinations, handling more than 23 million passengers in 2015.