The powder found at a Brussels mosque has turned out to be a false alarm, our news desk reports:
A suspicious envelope containing a white powder discovered in a large mosque in Brussels has turned out to be flour.
Anne Wibin, the spokesperson of the Brussels fire department, told journalists on November 26 that the department had received a call from the mosque from a person saying they believed that they had found anthrax powder.
Wibin said tests proved the substance was not anthrax, with a police official later saying it was flour.
Police and decontamination crews had converged at the Islamic and Cultural Center of Belgium, near the headquarters of the European Union, to secure the scene.
Brussels has been under high security alert since November 21 following what officials described as credible threats of a "Paris-like attack," referring to the November 13 terrorist attacks in the French capital that left 130 dead and hundreds injured.
Since those attacks, which involved alleged terrorists from Belgium, a previously unknown group called Christian State has issued threats against Belgian mosques. (Reuters, AP)
There have been several reports today that Russian planes have targeted Syrian border crossings and towns on the Turkish border.
Residents of the rebel-held Syrian border town of Saraqeb say that Russian planes bombed a busy main square today where vehicles brought in from Turkey via the Bab al-Hawa border crossing were being sold, Reuters report.
Saraqeb is in Idlib province, on the border with Turkey. Its car market is the biggest in the province.
One resident who witnessed the air strike told Reuters that several wounded people had been taken to hospital.
Russia's Foreign Ministry has said the United States is aware of the identities of the gunmen who shot a Russian pilot after he parachuted out of the downed Su-24 jet two days ago.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said she was waiting for "relevant statements" from the State Department regarding "who danced around the body of the Russian pilot."
"I would like to draw the attention of State Department's press service to [the fact that] social networks have all the information about those people, and their photographs too, who fired at the Russian pilot from the ground," Zakharova said.
Russia's Foreign Ministry is calling on Russian citizens in Turkey to return home, AFP is reporting.
Russia's Foreign Ministry has called on the United Nations to react to a recent incident in which three Russian journalists escorted by the Syrian Army in a government-held area in Latakia were injured after coming under fire from armed opposition groups.
The three journalists -- two from RT and one from TASS -- were wearing "all the required identificating signs of media workers but were fired on," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a press briefing.
The journalists were hit by a TOW anti-tank missile of the type supplied to Western-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebels.
Zakharova also criticized the Western-backed rebels, saying that it was the "moderate opposition" who had "put photos of the journalists on the internet and wrote, 'if you see them, kill them'."
Russia has made no distinction between the IS group, Islamist rebels and Western-backed FSA fighters.
The Foreign Ministry's comments come amid soaring tensions with Turkey over the downing of the Russian Su-24 jet in Syria and amid ongoing criticism that Russian air strikes in Syria are targeting armed opposition groups rather than IS.
Economic measures against Turkey in the wake of the downing of the Russian Su-24 warplane could include freezing the Turkish Stream proposed natural gas pipeline and the Akkuyu nuclear power plant, Russian Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukaev has said.
The Turkish Stream project "does not differ from any other project and it is likewise about our investment cooperation, and likewise is subject to the law on special economic measures, just like any other project," Ulyukaev said, adding that the Akkuyu nuclear plant is in the same category.
The Akkuyu plant is under construction in Turkey's Mersin province and is expected to be completed in 2020.
Iran's Fars News, which has ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), is reporting that Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani led the rescue operation that retrieved the Russian navigator from the downed Su-24 jet.
The Fars report comes after reports that Soleimani had been injured a few days ago in fighting in the southwest of Aleppo province.
Reports had been circulating that Soleimani had been killed or seriously injured. But a security source on the ground in Syria told AFP yesterday that the general had been only "lightly injured."
Turkey will not apologize for downing the Russian Su-24, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has told CNN.
"I think if there is a party that needs to apologize, it is not us," Erdogan said.
"Those who violated our airspace are the ones who need to apologize. Our pilots and our armed forces, they simply fulfilled their duties, which consisted of responding to ... violations of the rules of engagement. I think this is the essence."
A large mosque in Brussels has been evacuated after the discovery there of a suspicious envelope containing an unidentified white powder.
Police and decontamination crews converged at the Islamic and Cultural Center of Belgium, near the headquarters of the European Union, on November 26 to secure the scene.
A fire service spokesperson said someone at the mosque had called them to alert them to the suspicious substance.
Brussels has been under high security alert since November 21 following what officials described as credible threats of a "Paris-like attack," referring to the November 13 terrorist attacks in the French capital that left 130 dead and hundreds injured.
Since those attacks, which involved alleged terrorists from Belgium, a previously unknown group called Christian State has issued threats against Belgian mosques.
Some 500,000 Muslims live in Belgium. (Reuters, AP)