Guard At Belgium Nuclear Plant Shot and Killed Two Days After Brussels Terrorist Attacks

Two days after terrorist bombing attack on the Brussels airport, a security guard at a Belgian nuclear plant was killed on Thursday.

The security guard was identified as Didier Prospero and his access badge was stolen. He was a guarding Belgium’s national radioactive elements institute at the municipality of Fleurus, to the south of Brussels, and living in the city of Charleroi.

However, the Charleroi prosecutor's office denied that his security pass had been stolen and deactivated as soon as investigators raised the alarm, a public Belgian broadcast entity said.

On Thursday, Derniere Heure reported that the suicide bombers who killed 31 people were initially targeting a nuclear site, but a series of arrests of suspect militants, including suspected Paris attacker Salah Abdeslam, pushed them to speed up their plots.

Last year, a senior nuclear industry official was secretly filmed by militants. It is suspected that they plotted to abduct him to gain information about radioactive materials.

Belgian authorities have looked carefully into the risk posed by jihadists to its nuclear facilities in the past.

Last November 10 hours of surveillance video of a top Belgian nuclear scientist was revealed in a house belonging to a known jihadi, but the existence of the footage was only acknowledged by Belgian authorities on February 18 after it was leaked to a Belgian paper.

British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon expressed his concerns about ISIS getting its hands on a nuclear weapon. When asked, Fallon said that “was a new and emerging threat,” according to the New York Times.

Right after the Brussels terrorist attacks, personnel from Belgium’s two nuclear power stations in Doel and in Tihange were evacuated immediately.