Boys ride on their bicycles past shops in the neighbourhood of Molenbeek, where Belgian police staged a raid following the attacks in Paris, at Brussels, Belgium November 15, 2015. REUTERS/Yves Herman

By Robert-Jan Bartunek and Alastair Macdonald

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - "A breeding ground for violence" the mayor of Molenbeek called her borough on Sunday, speaking of unemployment and overcrowding among Arab immigrant families, of youthful despair finding refuge in radical Islam.

But as the Brussels district on the wrong side of the city's post-industrial canal becomes a focus for police pursuing those behind Friday's mass attacks in Paris, Belgian authorities are asking what makes the narrow, terraced streets of Molenbeek different from a thousand similar neighborhoods across Europe.

Three themes emerge as Molenbeek is again in a spotlight of Islamist violence, home not just to militants among Belgium's own half a million Muslims but, it seems, for French radicals seeking a convenient, discreet base to lie low, plan and arm before striking their homeland across the border:

Security services face difficulties due to Belgium's local devolution and tensions between the country's French- and Dutch-speaking halves; the country has long been open to fundamentalist preachers from the Gulf; and it has a thriving black market in automatic rifles of the kind used in Paris.

"With 500-1,000 euros (dollars) you can get a military weapon in half an hour," said Bilal Benyaich, senior fellow at Brussels think-tank the Itinera Institute, who has studied the spread of radical Islam in Belgium. "That makes Brussels more like a big U.S. city" in mostly gun-free Europe, he said.

Two of the attackers who killed over 130 people, 270 km (170 miles) away in Paris on Friday night were Frenchmen resident in Belgium. Belgian police raided Molenbeek addresses and seven people have been arrested in Belgium over the Paris attacks.

"Almost every time, there is a link to Molenbeek," said 39-year-old centrist prime minister Charles Michel, whose year-old coalition is battling radical recruiters who have tempted more than 350 Belgians to fight in Syria - relative to Belgium's 11 million population, easily the biggest contingent from Europe.

But "preventive measures" of the past few months were not enough, Michel said, describing Molenbeek as a "gigantic problem" and saying: "There has to be more of a crackdown."

His interior minister, Jan Jambon, vowed to "cleanse" the district personally. Conservatives blamed lax oversight on left-wing predecessors, nationally and in Molenbeek town hall, and dueled over whether Dutch-speaking Flanders or mainly French-speaking Brussels and the south did more to curb the radicals.

Such differences, which have translated into a profusion of layers of government and policing in an effort to appease centrifugal forces that long threatened to break Belgium apart, have created problems for intelligence and security services.

Jambon has complained himself of a profusion of police forces across state and language lines, including six in Brussels alone, a city of just 1.8 million.

POLICE LACK "GRIP"

"Belgium is a federal state and that's always an advantage for terrorists," said Edwin Bakker, professor at the Centre for Terrorism and Counterterrorism at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. "Having several layers of government hampers the flow of information between investigators."

Contrasting Belgium with its centralized Dutch neighbor, he added: "It's much more difficult for groups to disappear from the radar just by moving 10 kilometers."

Given the difficulty of gathering intelligence in places like Molenbeek, a borough of 90,000 where some neighborhoods were up to 80 percent Muslim, any gaps in the information chain were problematic, Bakker said: "In parts of Brussels there are areas on which the police have little grip, very segregated areas that don't feel they're a part of the Belgian state.

"In such a case it's very difficult to get feedback from the community. That means while the neighbors may have seen something going on, they're not passing it to the police. Then it becomes very tough for intelligence agencies as only relying on them and not local police is not sufficient."

Political complication is also blamed for slowing the passing of new laws, for example to rein in the preaching of hate in mosques or recruitment for and travel to the Syrian war.

While some of Molenbeek's old factories - it once enjoyed the industrious nickname "Petit Manchester" - have made it a smart address for bohemian loft living, areas tumbling out from the ship canal, offering halal butchers, street stalls and backstreet mosques are some of the poorest in northwest Europe.

The 25 percent jobless rate, rising to 37 percent among the young, is significantly higher than other parts of Brussels, also home to a thriving, cosmopolitan middle class drawn by the European Union institutions on the other side of the city.

Belgian officials are also increasingly concerned about the influence of radical versions of Islam. They remain a minority taste; the Muslim Executive of Belgium, an umbrella group, spoke of its support for democratic values and condemned "barbarism".

Molenbeek, which notably in 2012 saw street protests against enforcement of Belgian law on Muslim face veils, has, however, been among areas where fundamentalist preachers have flourished.

FUNDAMENTALIST PEDIGREE

George Dallemagne, a center-right opposition member of the federal parliament, traces some problems back to the 1970s when resource-poor, heavily industrial Belgium sought favor with Saudi Arabia by providing mosques for Gulf-trained preachers.

These brought with them fundamentalist teachings then alien to most of Belgium's Moroccan immigrants.

Pointing at Molenbeek, Dallemagne said: "The very strong influence of Salafists ... is one of the particularities that puts Belgium at the center of terrorism in Europe today."

Molenbeek is not unique in Belgium. The highest profile radical group taken on by the state has been sharia4belgium, a social media savvy organization whose leader and dozens of members were convicted early this year in the Flemish city of Antwerp of recruiting dozens to fight in Syria.

But, as Prime Minister Michel said, a Molenbeek connection keeps coming up in cases of Islamist attacks in Europe going back at least to the 2004 train bombings in Madrid, where one of those jailed for planning them was a Moroccan from the borough.

Over little more than a year, it has figured repeatedly. In August 2014, a Frenchman of Algerian origin was living there when he gunned down four people at Brussels' Jewish Museum. In January, when Belgian police killed two men in the eastern town of Verviers, foiling what they said was a plot to kidnap and behead a policeman on camera, many leads led back to Molenbeek.

French police investigating after the shootings in January at Paris magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher grocery suspect one of the killers acquired guns via Molenbeek. So too, prosecutors say, did the Spanish-based Moroccan overpowered on a Brussels to Paris train in August. He had an AK-47 and nearly 300 bullets.

"AIRBASE FOR JIHADISTS"

"Molenbeek is a pitstop for radicals and criminals of all sorts," said Benyaich, of the Itinera Institute. "It's a place where you can disappear."

Dallemagne added: "Terrorists are radicalised in France, go to Syria to fight and when they come back they find in Molenbeek the logistical support and the networks they need to carry out terrorist attacks, be it here in Belgium or abroad.

"It's like an airbase for jihadists."

One of the main attractions, investigators say, is weaponry.

Some of that, said Nils Duquet, a researcher at the Flemish Peace Institute, dates back to before 2006 when Belgium, whose state-owned FN Herstal sidearm manufacturer supplied many of the world's armies, also had a relaxed approach to gun ownership.

"With the right connections, it's quite easy to find illegal weapons in Belgium," Duquet said. "Criminals used to come to buy weapons legally. And they kept coming because they found the right networks and people here to get weapons, even after 2006."

Kalashnikov assault rifles of the kind used in the attacks in Paris in January and on Friday, were mostly from stocks left after the war in the former Yugoslavia and mostly reached western Europe in the back of a car, he said. Investigators are looking into links between the Paris attacks and a man from Montenegro arrested with guns in his car in Germany this month.

European Union interior ministers will hold an emergency meeting in Brussels on Friday at France's request and will deal yet again with longstanding concerns about traffic in firearms.

However, just as a lack of coordination among the EU's 28 states is blamed by many for a flourishing trade across their open borders, Belgium's extreme form of decentralized government makes it hard to crack down on dealers even in one small state:

"In Belgium, there's a problem with data management. Nobody knows how many illegal weapons there are in Belgium," said Duquet. "The reality is we have no idea."

(Additional reporting by Emmanuel Jarry in Paris; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Dean Yates)

Belgium's 'breeding ground for violence'

Molenbeek, a poor, overcrowded district in Brussels, is seen as a home to militant Muslims in Europe.
Police arrest 7 in the borough

A Chilean mother and her daughter, cut down in a concert hall while the daughter's 5-year-old son survived. A young Italian woman, separated from her boyfriend and friends when the concert erupted in chaos. They were among the latest victims named as officials on Sunday continued the heavy task of identifying the 129 people killed in Friday night's coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris. Among the confirmed dead:

—Nick Alexander, 36, of Colchester, England, who was working at the Bataclan concert hall selling merchandise for the performing band, Eagles of Death Metal. "Nick was not just our brother, son and uncle, he was everyone's best friend — generous, funny and fiercely loyal," his family said in a statement. "Nick died doing the job he loved and we take great comfort in knowing how much he was cherished by his friends around the world."

—Thomas Ayad, 32, producer manager for Mercury Music Group and a music buff who was killed at the Bataclan. In his hometown, Amiens, he was an avid follower of the local field hockey team. Lucian Grainge — the chairman of Universal Music Group, which owns Mercury Music — said the loss was "an unspeakably appalling tragedy," in a Saturday note to employees provided to the Los Angeles Times.

—Asta Diakite, cousin of French midfielder Lassana Diarra, who played against Germany in Friday's soccer match at Stade de France, during which three suicide bombers blew themselves up outside the stadium Friday night. Diarra, who is Muslim, posted a moving message on Twitter after his cousin was killed in the shootings, saying that "She was like a big sister to me." He added: "It is important for all of us who represent our country and its diversity to stay united against a horror which has no color, no religion. Stand together for love, respect and peace."

—Guillame Decherf, 43, a writer who covered rock music for the French culture magazine Les Inrocks. He was at the Eagles of Death Metal concert, having written about the band's latest album.

A fellow music journalist, Thomas Mafrouche, often saw Decherf at concerts and was supposed to meet him Sunday. In a Facebook message to The Associated Press, Mafrouche said Decherf was extremely proud of his two young daughters. "I'm thinking about their pain, about their father, whom they will miss terribly," he wrote. Laurence Faure with the Hard Force heavy metal website, to which Decherf contributed, said Decherf was appreciated for his humor and kindness. "He didn't have an ego problem," she wrote.

—Fabrice Dubois, who worked with the publicity agency Publicis Conseil. The agency said in a statement on Facebook that he was killed at the concert hall and that "the entire agency is upset. He was a very great man in every sense of the word. Our thoughts are with his family, his wife, his children, his friends, those with whom he worked."

—Michelli Gil Jaimez, of Tuxpan in the Mexican state of Veracruz, had studied at a business school in Lyons, France, and was currently living in Paris. She also held Spanish citizenship. She had just gotten engaged to her Italian boyfriend, according to her Facebook page. Mexican officials did not give her age or say where she was killed.

—Nohemi Gonzalez, 23, a senior at California State University, Long Beach. The university said Gonzalez, from El Monte, California, was attending Strate College of Design in Paris during a semester abroad program. Gonzalez was in the Petit Cambodge restaurant with another Long Beach State student when she was fatally shot, Cal State officials said in a news conference Saturday.

Her mother, Beatriz Gonzalez, said Nohemi graduated early from high school early and couldn't wait to go to college. "She was very independent since she was little," she said. Design professor Michael LaForte said Gonzalez stood out at the California university. "She was a shining star, and she brought joy, happiness, laughter to everybody she worked with and her students, her classmates."

—Alberto Gonzalez Garrido, 29, of Madrid, who was at the Bataclan concert. The Spanish state broadcaster TVE said Gonzalez Garrido was an engineer, living in France with his wife, also an engineer. They both were at the concert, but became separated amid the mayhem.

— Mathieu Hoche, 38, a cameraman for France24 news channel, also killed at the concert. A friend, Antoine Rousseay, tweeted about how passionately Hoche loved rock 'n' roll. Gerome Vassilacos, who worked with Hoche, told the AP that his colleague was fun, easygoing and great to work with. "Even though he laughed easily and joked around, he worked hard."

Hoche had a 9-year-old son whom he had custody of every other weekend, so he lived a bit of a bachelor lifestyle, Vassilacos said. He and Hoche would go out for beers and chat up women, and Vassilacos said he recently thought they should hang out more often because they had so much in common.

—Djamila Houd, 41, of Paris, originally from the town of Dreux, southwest of the capital. The newspaper serving Dreux — L'Echo Republicain — said Houd was killed at a cafe on the rue de Charrone in Paris. According to Facebook posts from grieving friends, she had worked for Isabel Marant, a prestigious Paris-based ready-to-wear house.

—Cédric Mauduit, director of modernization of the French department of Calvados. The department issued a statement announcing his death at the concert hall, saying that Mauduit "found it a joy to share this concert with his five friends" and said the sadness of those who knew him was "immense." Anyone who worked with Mauduit, the statement said, could appreciate both his skills and his humanity.

—Valentin Ribet, 26, a lawyer with the Paris office of the international law firm Hogan Lovell, who was killed in the Bataclan. Ribet received a master of laws degree from the London School of Economics in 2014, and earlier did postgraduate work at the Sorbonne university in Paris. His law firm said he worked on the litigation team, specializing in white collar crime. "He was a talented lawyer, extremely well liked, and a wonderful personality in the office," the firm said.

— Patricia San Martin Nunez, 61, a Chilean exile, and her daughter, Elsa Veronique Delplace San Martin, 35. They were attending the concert at the Bataclan with Elsa's 5-year-old son, who Chilean officials say survived. San Martin Nunez had been exiled from Chile during the dictatorship of Gen Augusto Pinochet, and her daughter was born in France.

In a statement, Chile's Foreign Ministry described them as the niece and grandniece of Chile's ambassador to Mexico, Ricardo Nunez. "They were taken hostage, and so far we know they were killed in a cold and brutal manner," Nunez told Radio Cooperativa on Saturday. He said two people with them escaped alive.

— Valeria Solesin, 28, an Italian-born doctoral student at the Sorbonne. She had lived in Paris for several years and had gone to the concert at the Bataclan with her boyfriend. They lost track of each other as they tried to escape. Her mother, Luciana Milani, told reporters in Venice, "We will miss her very much, and she will be missed, I can also say, by our country. People like this are important."

Solesin had been working at the Sorbonne as a researcher while completing her doctorate. While at a university in Italy, Solesin had worked as a volunteer for the Italian humanitarian aid group Emergency. "It is tragic that a person so young, who is trying to understand the world and to be a help, find herself involved in such a terrible event," said Emergency regional coordinator in Trento, Fabrizio Tosini.

— Luis Felipe Zschoche Valle, 33, a Chilean-born resident of Paris. Chile's Foreign Ministry said he had lived in Paris for eight years with his French wife and was killed at the Bataclan, where he had gone with his wife. He was a musician and member of the rock group Captain Americano.

Some governments announced that their citizens had been killed, without giving names. Germany's Foreign Ministry said Sunday that a German man was killed. The Paris correspondent for German public broadcaster ARD, Mathias Werth, wrote on Twitter that the man had been sitting on the terrace of a cafe when he was killed. Sweden's Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said a Swedish citizen was killed. Mexico's government said another of its citizens, a woman who held dual Mexican-U.S. citizenship, was killed.

___

Associated Press writers Colleen Barry in Milan, Kate Brumback in Atlanta, Maria Verza in Mexico City, and Steven R. Hurst in Washington contributed to this report.

Names of more victims emerge after Paris attacks

WASHINGTON (AP) — The deadly Paris attacks have intensified Republican opposition to letting thousands of Syrian refugees come to the United States.

Republican presidential contender Marco Rubio on Sunday said the United States cannot do so because it's impossible to know whether people fleeing Syria have links to Islamic militants — an apparent shift from earlier statements in which he left open the prospect of migrants being admitted with proper vetting.

"It's not that we don't want to, it's that we can't," Rubio said Sunday on ABC's "This Week." "Because there's no way to background check someone that's coming from Syria. Who do you call and do a background check on them?"

The question of admitting Syrian refugees has for months been part of the national security discussion among 2016 candidates that cuts to the heart of the American identity as a refuge.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush on Sunday told NBC's "Meet the Press" that the U.S. should admit Syrian Christians, after proper vetting. Other Republican candidates have called for a ban on allowing Syrians into the U.S. All three Democratic presidential candidates have said they would admit Syrians but only after thorough background checks.

But Friday night's mass killings in Paris, which left at least 129 people dead, offered evidence that may have backed up what many, including Rubio, had been warning: People with secret ties to Islamic militants could flow across borders as part of waves of refugees.

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FILE - In this Monday, Aug. 24, 2015 file photo, migrants wait to register with the police in refuge …

Authorities said a Syrian passport found near one of the Paris attackers that had been registered last month and traveled through three countries along a busy migrant corridor known for lax controls. It was not clear whether the document was real or forged. Officials on Sunday were still trying to identify people involved in the conspiracy. They said as many as three of the seven suicide bombers who died in the attacks were French citizens.

Republican presidential contender Ben Carson, a retired brain surgeon, said that from the viewpoint of the Islamic State group, it would be "almost malpractice" not to do everything possible to infiltrate the refugee ranks with militants bent on waging jihad.

A spokesman for President Barack Obama said Sunday that the administration is moving forward with its plan to thoroughly vet and admit as many as 10,000 Syrian refugees.

"What we need to be able to do frankly is sort out that foreign fighter flow, those who have gone into Syria and come out and want to launch attacks or those people who have connections with ISIL in Syria," Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said on Fox News Sunday. "At the same time, we have to recognize there's tragic victims of this conflict, there are women, and children, orphans of this war and I think we need to do our part, along with our allies, to provide them a safe haven."

The Paris attacks have elevated national security in the presidential contest. In Saturday night's Democratic presidential debate, which began with a moment of silence for the Paris victims, all three candidates — former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley — said the U.S. should admit far more than the 10,000 Syrians to which Obama has committed, but only with proper screening.

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Two people stand on a terrace in the town hall behind a French flag at half mast in Madrid, Spain, S …

Rubio on Sunday said that was impossible.

"You can't pick up the phone and call Syria, and that's one of the reasons why I said we won't be able to take more refugees," Rubio said on ABC.

That is a switch from Rubio's other statements this fall, in which he voiced skepticism about proper vetting but still left the door open to admitting refugees. In September, he told Boston Herald radio: "We've always been a country that's been willing to accept people who have been displaced. And I would be open to that if it can do it in a way that allows us to ensure that among them are not infiltrated, people who are part of a terrorist organization."

Bush said Sunday that the U.S. has a responsibility to "help with refugees after proper screening."

"And I think or focus ought to be on the Christians who have no place in Syria anymore," he added in an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"They're being beheaded, they're being executed by both sides," he said. "And I think we have a responsibility to help."

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Follow Laurie Kellman on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/APLaurieKellman

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Aftermath of the twin blasts claimed by IS near Beirut

Beirut (AFP) - Lebanon has arrested 11 people, mostly Syrians, over last week's Beirut bombings that killed 44 people, an attack whose original target was a hospital, officials said on Sunday.

"The detained include seven Syrians and two Lebanese, one of them a (would-be) suicide bomber and the other a trafficker who smuggled them across the border from Syria," Interior Minister Nuhad Mashnuq told a news conference.

The Islamic State (IS) jihadist group claimed responsibility for Thursday's attacks which hit a busy shopping street in Burj al-Barajneh, a suburb where the Shiite movement Hezbollah is popular.

"The whole suicide bombing network and its supporters were arrested in the 48 hours following the explosion," Mashnuq said, calling the arrests "an extraordinary achievement".

He said the seven Syrians were detained in a Palestinian refugee camp located in Burj al-Barajneh and a flat in the capital's eastern district of Ashrafieh that had been used to prepare the explosive belts.

Security forces arrested the Lebanese would-be suicide attacker in the northern port city of Tripoli after he had failed to detonate his suicide belt, Mashnuq said.

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Workers clear debris from the site of a twin bombing attack in a southern suburb of Beirut that kill …

The initial plan was apparently to send five suicide bombers to a hospital in the neighbourhood, he said, but heavy security forced them to change the target to a densely populated area of the capital.

The internal security services later announced the arrest of two other suspects, a Lebanese and a Syrian.

A statement said one confessed that he transported one of the suicide bombers from Syria to Lebanon and gave him explosives while the other said he transferred money used to plan the bombings.

- 'It won't be the last' -

Mashnuq hinted that he expected further attacks: "When they send five suicide attackers to one place, it means... it won't be the last."

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Hassan Nasrallah, head of Lebanon's militant Hezbollah movement, condemned the November 13 attac …

The bloodshed in Beirut came a day before a string of bomb and gun attacks in the French capital, also claimed by IS, that left at least 129 dead and more than 350 people wounded.

The Beirut blasts were the first to target a Hezbollah-dominated neighbourhood since mid-2014, after a string of such attacks rocked the city in 2013 and 2014.

Those explosions were ostensibly in revenge for Hezbollah's military support for regime forces in neighbouring Syria's civil war.

Most of them were claimed by a variety of Sunni extremist groups, including one in January 2014 by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which later became IS.

But Thursday's was the largest IS attack ever in Lebanon, and among the deadliest bombings to hit the volatile country in decades.

It sparked an outpouring of sympathy for the victims, with people sharing photographs of those killed on social media accounts.

One victim, Adel Tarmous, was hailed as a hero in the newspapers for having prevented a bomber from entering a Shiite place of worship.

In a televised address on Saturday, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah urged supporters not to retaliate against the more than one million Syrian refugees in Lebanon.