A Palestinian Arab asylum seeker was arrested in Brussels on Wednesday, the day after he visited a migrant aid organization where he allegedly talked about planning a suicide attack, a source close to the case told AFP.
The man, in his twenties, was visibly "desperate" about his family's situation in the Gaza Strip, according to the same source, and is said to have declared his intention to "die as a martyr by blowing himself up".
According to the Belga press agency, the young man was arrested around midday Wednesday in a Brussels hotel following a large-scale search operation.
In early afternoon, the Brussels public prosecutor's office announced the arrest of an individual in the Belgian capital, without confirming that it was the individual who had been sought.
The source told AFP that the threats made by the man were taken very seriously due to the fact that they come during the war between Israel and Hamas
The terrorist threat level in Belgium was raised last week from two to three, the second-highest level and considered "serious", according to AFP.
This followed an attack in the Belgian capital in which two Swedish nationals were shot dead, and another injured, by a radicalized Tunisian.
The attacker was shot dead by Belgian police on October 17, the day after the attack.
Earlier this week, French media reported that an attempted terror attack against the Israeli Embassy in Brussels was foiled in August.
According to the report, two 15-year-old boys of Chechen origin, a French 16-year-old, and a 16-year-old Belgian were arrested after they planned to arrive at the Israeli Embassy in August armed with knives and rifles to murder police officers at the entrance and detonate an explosives-laden vehicle.
Brussels was hit with a major terrorist attack in 2016, in which 32 people were murdered by Islamists.
Reports following the 2016 bombing indicated that Belgium received advanced warnings of the terrorist attacks but did not act on those warnings.
Israeli TV reported at the time that Israel had provided Belgium with concrete information on security breaches at the Zaventem Airport, where the first of two attacks on the Belgian capital took place, and claimed that "there are serious security deficiencies at the airport in Brussels".