After recent gunfire incidents in the capital, Brussels N-VA parliamentarian Mathias Vanden Borre has called for an urgent meeting of the Interior Affairs Committee.
“In some neighbourhoods, bullets are literally falling from the sky with no political response. It’s clear the dealers are not on holiday,” he said in a statement on Monday.
According to data from the “Gun Violence Incident Monitor” by the Flemish Peace Institute, shootings in Brussels have claimed 13 lives and injured 44 people in 2024. The media outlet Bruzz has already recorded over 50 incidents this year, a situation Vanden Borre deems “untenable.”
He plans to question the acting Minister-President, Rudi Vervoort (PS), about the measures he has taken, and plans to take, to achieve the planned merger of police zones, expected to be operational by early 2027.
Vanden Borre also advocates for additional measures at both regional and municipal levels, noting that “it is clear that combating drug-related violence requires more effort than what is currently being done.”
On the night from Sunday to Monday, shots were fired again in Molenbeek, though no one was injured. The previous day, gunfire in the same neighbourhood resulted in an injury.
“In this way, we might as well replace the Welcome to Molenbeek signs with Welcome to the Wild West,” remarked Gloria Garcia Fernandez, the MR leader in Molenbeek.
In a statement, the liberals called for an increase in targeted patrols in high-risk areas, an expansion of video surveillance, enhanced cooperation with federal police and justice to dismantle armed networks, a zero-tolerance policy towards trafficking fuelling the violence, and the implementation of bans on gatherings in certain sensitive areas.
