BRUSSELS — Belgium’s prime minister refused to accept the resignations of his justice and interior ministers Thursday despite increasing evidence of intelligence and law enforcement failures to prevent this week’s attacks by Islamic militants.
“We don’t have to be proud about what happened,” Justice Minister Koen Geens said of the government’s failures to halt the attacks. “We perhaps did things we should not have done, at the same time.”
Authorities, meanwhile, lowered Belgium’s terror-threat level by one notch, although they said the situation remained grave and another attack is “likely and possible.”
Belgium had been on its highest alert ever since Tuesday’s bombings in the Brussels airport and subway that killed 31 people and wounded 270.
Less than a mile from the bombed subway station, European justice and home ministers held an emergency meeting where they condemned the “terrorist acts” as “an attack on our open, democratic society.” They also urged the European parliament to adopt an agreement allowing authorities to exchange airport passenger data.
DANE, Wis. — Ted Cruz branded Donald Trump a “sniveling coward” Thursday as the feud between the Republican presidential contenders over their wives took a nastier turn.
After an earlier and vague threat to “spill the beans” about Heidi Cruz, Trump stoked the spat on Twitter when he retweeted side-by-side images of Cruz’s wife, with an unflattering grimace, and his wife, Melania, in a gauzyruz, glamorous pose.
“No need to spill the beans,” said the caption. “The images are worth a thousand words.”
Ted Cruz, campaigning in Wisconsin, was livid.
“Leave Heidi the hell alone,” Cruz said, speaking through reporters to Trump.
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — A U.N. war crimes court convicted former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic of genocide and nine other charges Thursday for orchestrating a campaign of terror that left 100,000 people dead during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia, the worst carnage in Europe since World War II.
Karadzic was sentenced to 40 years in prison for his role in Serb atrocities that included the Srebrenica massacre in which 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered in Europe’s worst mass murder since the Holocaust, and for directing the nearly four-year siege of Sarajevo.
In pronouncing the verdict, presiding Judge O-Gon Kwon said Karadzic and his military commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic, intended “that every able-bodied Bosnian Muslim male from Srebrenica be killed.”
Karadzic, the judge said, was the only person in the Bosnian Serb leadership with the power to halt the genocide, but instead gave an order for prisoners to be transported from one location to another to be killed. In the carefully planned 1995 operation, Serb forces moved Muslim men and boys to sites around the Srebrenica enclave in eastern Bosnia and gunned them down before dumping their bodies into mass graves.
Upon hearing the sentence, the 70-year-old Karadzic slumped slightly in his chair, but otherwise showed little emotion. He plans to appeal the convictions.
DAMASCUS, Syria — Syrian government forces pushed into the ancient town of Palmyra, where Islamic State militants appeared on the verge of collapse Thursday, while in Iraq, a military spokesman announced the start of a long-awaited operation to recapture the IS-held northern city of Mosul.
The extremist group has been losing ground in Syria and Iraq for months under a stepped-up campaign of U.S.-led and Russian airstrikes, as well as ground assaults by multiple forces in each country.
The retaking of Palmyra — a UNESCO world heritage site whose fall to the militants last May sent shock waves through archaeological circles and beyond — would be a significant victory for the Syrian government. But the operation to unseat the group in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, is likely to take much longer and be far more difficult. The advance on Palmyra came after government forces, backed by Russian airstrikes, managed to capture several hills and high ground around the town this week.