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Summoned for questioning by Belgian police, a man with a history of weapons and drug offenses left home armed with hand grenades, a revolver and an assault rifle. Stopping at a central square filled with holiday shoppers, he lobbed three grenades into the crowd, then opened fire Attack in Belgian city Leaves 5 Dead. Four people were killed, including an 18-month-old toddler, and 122 were wounded in the assault Tuesday that brought tragedy to the pre-Christmas season of students reveling in exam results and preschoolers enchanted by brightly lit trees and holiday stalls Attack in Belgian city Leaves 5 Dead. Attack in Belgian city Leaves 5 Dead Authorities said the shooter also died, but they were at a loss to explain the reason for the onslaught. The Prime Minister said it was not related to terrorism Attack in Belgian city Leaves 5 Dead.

In a second burst of deadly violence in Western Europe on Tuesday — attacks rare for the continent — a man shot and killed two Senegalese vendors at a market in Italy.

The midday attack in the eastern Belgian city of Liege sent hundreds of panicked shoppers stampeding down the cobbled streets of the old city, fleeing explosions and bullets.

Belgian authorities identified the shooter as Nordine Amrani, a 33-year-old Liege resident who had done jail time for offenses involving guns and drugs, and had been called in for questioning Tuesday in a sexual abuse case.

Officials said Amrani left his home with a backpack, armed with hand grenades, a revolver and an FAL assault rifle. He walked alone to the busy Place Saint-Lambert, the central entry point to downtown shopping streets, then climbed onto an overpass that gave him an ideal view of the square, which was bedecked with a huge Christmas tree and crowded with shoppers.

From there, Amrani lobbed three hand grenades toward a central bus stop, which serves 1,800 buses a day, and opened fire. The explosions sent shards of glass from the bus shelter across a wide area.

“I heard a loud boom,” said Dimitri Degryse, who was driving near the square. “I thought it was something on my car that was broken or something. Then a few seconds after a second boom, and I saw all the glass breaking, I saw people running, screaming.”

Attack in Belgian city leaves 5 dead
Hundreds fled the square as well as a nearby Christmas market. Video showed people, including a large group of preschoolers, rushing to seek cover, some still carrying shopping bags.

Amrani died at the scene, but Liege Prosecutor Danielle Reynders told reporters he was not killed by police. It was unclear if he committed suicide or died by accident, though he still had a number of grenades with him.

Those killed were two boys ages 15 and 17, a 75-year-old woman, and an 18-month-old toddler who died Tuesday evening in the hospital, Liege police said.

As police hunted for possible accomplices, residents were ordered to stay in their homes or seek shelter in shops or public buildings. Sirens blared and a police chopper roared overhead, and a medical post was set up in the nearby courtyard of the Prince Bishops courthouse. Dozens of emergency vehicles took victims away for treatment.

Police closed off the area but found no accomplices, and calm returned a few hours later.

The Place Saint-Lambert and the nearby Place du Marche host Liege’s annual Christmas market, which features 200 shops and attracts some 1.5 million visitors a year. A nearby Ferris wheel is also a central attraction.

By dusk, with the Christmas lights gleaming again, King Albert II and Queen Paola came to pay their respects, as did Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo.

Di Rupo stressed the attack was the act of a lone assailant, a man known to police who had no links to terrorism. “The whole country shares in the pain. This is an isolated case. This is not about terrorism,” he said.

Attack in Belgian city leaves 5 dead
Herman Van Rompuy, a former Belgian prime minister who is now president of the European Council, said he was badly shaken by the attack.

“There is no explanation whatsoever,” Van Rompuy said. “It leaves me perplexed and shocked.”

While such attacks are unusual in Western Europe, the continent has not been immune to such violence.

There was another deadly shooting Tuesday in Italy, where a man opened fire in an outdoor market in Florence, killing two vendors from Senegal and wounding three other Senegalese before killing himself, authorities said.

Investigators identified the attacker as 50-year-old Gianluca Casseri, and RAI state TV said he was known to police for having participated in racist marches by an extreme right-wing group.

In Norway last July, far-right extremist Anders Behring Breivik went on a bomb and shooting spree that killed 77 people in Oslo and an island retreat, apparently motivated by a hatred of Muslim immigrants and a deep grudge against the governing Labor Party. A psychiatric evaluation found him criminally insane, which if upheld by the courts means he would end up in compulsory psychiatric care instead of prison.

Germany, France Plan Quick New Stability Pact: Report, France and Germany are planning a quick new pact on budget discipline that might persuade the European Central Bank to ramp up its government bond purchases, Welt am Sonntag reported on Sunday.
Echoing a Reuters report on Friday from Brussels, the Sunday newspaper said the French and German leaders were prepared to back a deal with other euro countries that might induce the ECB to intervene more forcefully to calm the euro debt crisis.
The newspaper report quoted German government sources as saying that the crisis fighting plan could possibly be announced by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy in the coming week.
In an advance release before publication, Welt am Sonntag said that because it would take too long to change existing European Union treaties, euro zone countries should just agree among themselves on a new Stability Pact to enforce budget discipline – possibly implemented at the start of 2012.
It could be similar to the Schengen Agreement which applies to EU countries that choose to take part and enables their citizens to enjoy uninhibited cross border travel. Among the countries in the Stability Pact, there would be a treaty spelling out strict deficit rules and control rights for national budgets.
The European Central Bank should also emerge more as a crisis fighter in the euro zone, Welt am Sonntag wrote, saying that while governments cannot tell the independent ECB what to do, the expectations are clear.

France will seek Arab support on Thursday for a humanitarian corridor in Syria, the first time a major power has swung behind international intervention in the eight-month uprising against President Bashar al-Assad. Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, who first floated the proposal for a humanitarian intervention on Wednesday, gave more details of the plan and said he would propose it to a meeting of Arab League foreign ministers gathering in Cairo to discuss Syria. France seeks Arab backing for Syria intervention After months in which the international community has seemed determined to avoid any direct entanglement in one of the core countries of the Middle East, the diplomatic consensus seems to be changing.

The Arab League suspended Syria’s membership two weeks ago, accusing Assad of failing to fulfill a November 2 pledge to halt the violence and withdraw troops from cities.

This week, the prime minister of regional heavyweight Turkey – a NATO member with the military wherewithal to mount a cross-border operation – compared Assad to Hitler, Mussolini and Gaddafi, and called on him to quit.

Juppe said international monitors should be sent to protect civilians, with or without Assad’s permission. He insisted the proposal fell short of a military intervention, but acknowledged that humanitarian convoys would need armed protection.

“There are two possible ways: That the international community, Arab League and the United Nations can get the regime to allow these humanitarian corridors,” he told French radio on Thursday. “But if that isn’t the case we’d have to look at other solutions … with international observers,”

Asked if humanitarian convoys would need military protection, he said: “Of course… by international observers, but there is no question of military intervention in Syria.”

He added that he had spoken to partners at the United Nations and US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, and would speak later on Thursday to the Arab League. On Wednesday Juppe also embraced the exiled opposition Syrian National Council as a legitimate group that France sought to work with.

One Arab government representative at the League said measures which the 22-member organization might consider on Thursday included imposing a travel ban on Syrian officials, freezing bank transfers or funds in Arab states related to Assad’s government and stopping Arab projects in Syria.

“There are many ideas and suggestions for sanctions that can be imposed on the Syrian regime,” said the official, who asked not to be identified.

The United States and the European Union have already imposed sanctions on senior Syrian officials, its oil sector and several state businesses. An EU official said on Wednesday the bloc was considering fresh financial sanctions.

France seeks Arab backing for Syria intervention
Washington repeated an appeal on Wednesday for US citizens to leave Syria: “The US Embassy continues to urge US citizens in Syria to depart immediately while commercial transportation is available,” the embassy said on its website.

The US Navy said the aircraft carrier USS George HW Bush arrived this week in the Mediterranean. It made no reference to the unrest in Syria and said the ship would continue through the Mediterranean en route home to the United States.

A Western diplomat in the region said about the US aircraft carrier: “It is probably routine movement but it is going to put psychological pressure on the regime, and the Americans do not mind that.”

Darkness of the Middle Ages

Syria’s bloodshed could pitch the Muslim world into “the darkness of the Middle Ages,” Turkish President Abdullah Gul said on Wednesday.

A day earlier, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan criticized the “cowardice” of Assad, once a close ally, for turning guns on his own people.

Erdogan spoke of the fate of defeated dictators from Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini to Muammar Gaddafi, who was lynched by a mob last month at the end of an uprising that ultimately won the support of the West and Arab League states.

Khaled al-Habasi, an adviser to the Arab League’s secretary-general, said the organization was working on two tracks after it rejected amendments requested by Syria for a monitoring team to oversee implementation of a November 2 peace deal.

“They are working on uniting the Syrian opposition on a united vision regarding the future of Syria during the transitional period, and calling on the (Arab League’s) social and economic council to impose economic sanctions on the Syrian government,” he said.

Speaking after a meeting with Syria’s opposition National Council on Wednesday, Juppe described it as “the legitimate partner with which we want to work” — the biggest international endorsement yet for the nascent opposition body.

A spokesman for European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said the EU was ready to engage with the Syrian National Council and other opposition groups, but stressed the need for them to maintain a peaceful, non-sectarian approach.

The violence in Syria itself showed no signs of abating.

Authorities blame the bloodshed on armed groups, who they say have killed more than 1,100 members of the security forces since the unrest erupted in March. Syria has barred most independent media from Syria, making it difficult to verify accounts from activists and officials.

Activists and resident said Syrian forces killed two villagers on Wednesday in an agricultural area that has served as a supply line for defectors.

Two youths were also killed in the central city of Homs, 140-kms (90 miles) north of Damascus, which has become a center of resistance against Assad. Activists said evening demonstrations were held in several neighborhoods of Homs.

In the south, two villagers were killed near the city of Deraa on the border with Jordan, where more tanks and armored vehicles deployed in the last month after a slew of defections and attacks on loyalist forces, activists said.

Also on Wednesday, state news agency SANA reported the funerals of nine soldiers and policemen killed by “armed terrorist groups.” Thousands of soldiers have deserted the regular army since it started cracking down on the eight-month protest movement, inspired by Arab uprisings which toppled the leaders of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Assad, 46, seems prepared to fight it out, playing on fears of a sectarian war if Syria’s complex ethno-sectarian mosaic shatters and relying on support of senior officials and the military. However many experts say Assad, who can depend mainly on the loyalty of two elite Alawite units, cannot maintain current military operations without cracks emerging in the armed forces.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday renewed his call on Pakistan to close the safe havens for militants, said the awkward partner must be “unequivocal” in their approach. Testifying before Congress after a trip to the region, Clinton said she gave birth to a “free” message to Pakistan that it was urgent to act against the extremists of the Haqqani network, which he blamed for attacks in Afghanistan.

“I told him to try to distinguish between so-called good terrorists and bad terrorists is ultimately counterproductive and dangerous,” Clinton told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

“No one who targets innocent civilians of any nationality, must be tolerated or protected.

“We expect Pakistan to encourage the Taliban and others to participate in Afghan peace process in good faith, both by unequivocal public statements and closing shelters,” he said.

Clinton used unusually strong language on the trip last week, saying the U.S. tolerance worn out after indications that the Haqqani network is aimed at Americans, including through a 19-hour siege of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

The U.S. diplomat supported the assessment of the outgoing U.S. military chief, Admiral Mike Mullen, who last month said the Haqqani network was a “real arm” of Inter-Services Intelligence in Pakistan.

During Clinton’s visit, Foreign Minister of Pakistan, Hina Rabbani Khar, said both his country and Afghanistan can do more against militants, but denied any official support for the Haqqani network.