BRUSSELS (AP) — A Canadian woman was arrested and accused of espionage while working as an intern in the operational headquarters of the NATO military alliance, Belgian authorities said Saturday.
Belgium's Federal Prosecutor's Office said it launched an espionage investigation after NATO’s security services tipped off Belgium’s military intelligence. Authorities then detained “a Canadian citizen of Chinese origin” on Friday, a day after raiding the suspect's home and workplace inside NATO's vast command center.
“She is suspected of spying on behalf of a third country and of being a member of a criminal organization,” the prosecutors said in a statement.
The strategic headquarters of the Allied Powers, known as SHAPE, is located in the southern Belgian city of Mons near the French border. Military officials at SHAPE plan and command joint strategy, tactics and operations. The alliance’s political headquarters is in Brussels, where ambassadors from member nations meet to discuss defense spending, drone incursions and cyber threats. NATO's Cyber Security Centre is based at SHAPE.
Both Canada and Belgium are members of the 32-nation military alliance that in 2021 labeled China a “ security challenge " alongside active threats in Russia and the Middle East.
NATO leaders have said China is working to undermine global order, develop its military opaquely, and run destabilizing disinformation campaigns. They said that Beijing's goals and “assertive behavior present systemic challenges to the rules-based international order and to areas relevant to alliance security.”
The Chinese government denounced the statement and said its military buildup was defensive.
The arrest in Belgium comes at a crucial time for the alliance as it weathers deep criticism from President Donald Trump who has drawn down the U.S. security role in Europe. Trump has been pressing allies to spend more on defense and join the conflict in Iran while at the same time threatening to seize by force Greenland from NATO-member Denmark, a move that rattled Europeans and the alliance.
Last year, following pressure from Trump, 32 NATO nations agreed to invest 5% of their gross domestic product on defense — 3.5% on defense items such as jets and missiles and 1.5% on infrastructure, including roads, bridges and ports, as well as cybersecurity.
FILE - A general view of the Meeting of the North Atlantic Council Session with fellow heads of state at the NATO summit at the IFEMA arena in Madrid, on June 30, 2022. (Jonathan Ernst/Pool Photo via AP, File)
NABLUS, West Bank (AP) — Israel’s military said it detained over 70 suspects across the occupied West Bank overnight and on Saturday, a day after troops deployed across the territory following violence that left two Israeli soldiers and four Palestinian villagers dead.
Soldiers remained in the village of Tell, in the northern West Bank, where Friday's clashes were centered. Palestinians described searches that included raids of a hospital in the city of Nablus, one of the territory's most violent areas.
Palestinians in the West Bank have faced violence as Israel’s hard-line government, dominated by settler leaders and supporters, has overseen a surge in settlement construction over the past four years. The international community overwhelmingly considers the Israeli settlement construction illegal and an obstacle to peace.
“More than 50 armed soldiers and officers stormed the hospital, terrifying the patients,” Ghassan Barkat, director of Nablus Specialty Hospital, told journalists. He said soldiers on Friday detained, bound and insulted staff and patients, raided hospital departments and arrested a seriously injured man, Ali Hussein Ali Ramadan.
“This should not happen in a healthcare institution,” said Barkat, adding that women and children were present.
An Israeli military statement did not mention the hospital, but it said over 300 locations were searched and what it described as affiliates of the Hamas militant group, arms traffickers, “terrorists” and others were detained.
The circumstances of Friday's events remained unclear, but Israeli media reports and interviews with local Palestinian officials suggested a group of settlers entered Tell and were confronted by residents fearful of an attack. The village is off-limits to Israelis as part of Area B under the 1993 Oslo Accords.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said Israeli soldiers shot and killed four Palestinians in Tell, while the military reported the deaths of two soldiers, one of them a settler in a local defense squad. Two other Israelis and four more Palestinians were wounded, health officials said.
The Israeli military on Saturday said it detained 11 suspects in Tell.
Over 80 Palestinians were arrested across the territory, said Amin Shuman, president of the Palestinian higher commission for the affairs of prisoners, calling them “an attempt to impose collective punitive measures and retaliatory policies” against Palestinian citizens after Friday’s events.
On Saturday, Israel's military said Israeli civilians and Palestinians threw rocks in a confrontation in the West Bank village of Susya, and the weapon of a soldier on leave was stolen but retrieved.
More than 700,000 Israelis live in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories captured by Israel in 1967 and sought by the Palestinians for an independent state along with the Gaza Strip.
Israeli strikes on Saturday killed at least four Palestinians and wounded at least 15 others across Gaza, according to Palestinian health officials.
In the southern city of Khan Younis, an airstrike killed a man and a woman, whose bodies were taken to Nasser Hospital, the hospital said.
In northern Gaza, a strike on a vehicle in the Jabaliya area killed one person and wounded two others, according to officials at Shifa Hospital, where the casualties were taken.
A strike on a motorbike in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighborhood killed the director of the area’s police force, according to the Interior Ministry and Shifa Hospital.
A strike in the central Gaza refugee camp of Nuseirat wounded three people, according to the Belgian field hospital, which received the casualties.
And Israeli drones struck the vicinity of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah, wounding 10 people, the hospital said. Chaotic scenes unfolded as severely wounded men covered in blood were rushed into the hospital by bystanders.
Israel's military said it struck a member of Hamas' military wing near Al-Aqsa hospital, and that it struck members of the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad military wings in the strikes on Nuseirat and Jabaliya. The military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the other strikes. Militants have carried out shooting attacks on troops, and Israel says its strikes are in response to that and other violations.
While the heaviest fighting has subsided since a fragile ceasefire took hold in October following two years of war between Israel and Hamas, Israeli forces have carried out repeated airstrikes, killing at least 1,191 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry.
The ministry, part of the Hamas-led government, maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts. It does not give a breakdown of civilians and militants but says women and children make up most of the dead.
Five Israeli soldiers have been killed since the ceasefire.
The Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas-led militants on Israel killed some 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage, sparking the war. Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed more than 73,317 Palestinians, including those killed since the ceasefire, Gaza’s Health Ministry said.
Palestinians inspect the site of an Israeli military strike, in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, Saturday, July 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
With the Israeli settlement of Khavat Gilad in the background, a Palestinian man stands in front of a burned car following an attack by Israeli settlers the previous day in the village of Sarra, near the West Bank city of Nablus, Saturday, July 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT - Palestinians evacuate an injured man following an Israeli military strike, in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, Saturday, July 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
A Palestinian man cleans a room of a house damaged following an attack by Israeli settlers the previous day in the village of Sarra, near the West Bank city of Nablus, Saturday, July 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
Hussein Ramadan, center left, father of two Palestinians killed by Israeli forces the previous day receives condolences from friends and neighbours in the village of Tell, near the West Bank city of Nablus, Saturday, July 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
Palestinians repair a damaged house following an attack by Israeli settlers the previous day in the village of Sarra, near the West Bank city of Nablus, Saturday, July 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
With the Israeli settlement of Khavat Gilad in the background, a Palestinian man stands in front of a burned car following an attack by Israeli settlers the previous day in the village of Sarra, near the West Bank city of Nablus, Saturday, July 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
A Palestinian man cleans a room of a house damaged following an attack by Israeli settlers the previous day in the village of Sarra, near the West Bank city of Nablus, Saturday, July 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
Palestinians gather to repair a damaged house following an attack by Israeli settlers the previous day in the village of Sarra, near the West Bank city of Nablus, Saturday, July 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
