EPALast Monday night, drug gangs turned Salvatore’s pizzeria in Brussels into a crime scene.
“We dropped to the floor. I had clients eating on the terrace with children. Look, we can see the bullet impacts everywhere.”
His restaurant sits on a pretty little square in St Gilles. It’s a central area of the city, close to the international Midi train station, where passengers arrive on trains from London and Paris.
Shootings related to drug trafficking have become routine in the Belgian capital over the past couple of years. There were over 100 in 2025 alone, and more than 65 shootings so far this year.
“Are we in an American gangster movie? This needs to stop,” Salvatore says.
A suspected drug dealer was shot in the leg in the same area the day before.
Now Murielle and her dog Chéva are sitting at that exact spot, just across the street: “We can still see the trace of the pool of blood.”
Murielle is 70, and hopes peace soon returns to her street.
“I like it here. It’s like a little village inside the city. Even the drug dealers used to be polite and decent. I would just tell them to go further away and they’d say, ‘Yes, ok mama!'”
Drug dealing is happening in plain sight here. Only five minutes after I arrive, I witness a transaction.
A buyer walks up to the seller, shakes their hand, and walks away with the drugs. Crack has become widely consumed amongst the poorest in this area of Brussels.
“Things have changed in the past six months,” says Murielle. “The business has intensified. Sometimes you even see consumers queuing to buy drugs. And now gangs are fighting over this spot.”
A successful drug-dealing point in Brussels nets up to €50,000 ($58,000; £43,000) per day or more for the dealer, according to the chief of Brussels South Police, Jurgen de Landsheer.
Organised crime in the Belgian capital has become significantly more violent, he says.
At the heart of it all is money. There are more than 200 drug-dealing points across the city, according to the police.
The rise of drug-related violence in the Belgian capital echoes the situation of other European cities such as the French port of Marseille.
Cocaine has become widely available in Europe, the continent’s ports serving as entry points for the drug. The port of Antwerp, just 40km (25 miles) away, has seen record cocaine seizures in recent years.
AFP via Getty ImagesJurgen de Landsheer says gangs in Brussels are now adopting methods seen in Marseille, although he insists his city has not reached the same level of violence.
“We don’t have no-go zones here in Brussels. It’s not easy to go in some neighbourhoods, but we go everywhere. We don’t want to become like some neighbourhoods in Marseille, so we’ll do everything to stop it.”
A police station even came under attack last weekend.
CCTV footage shows two men on a scooter stopping in front of the building and shooting at the door several times with what looks like an AK-47 before leaving on their scooter.
This marks an escalation, as it is the first time criminals have targeted police. Usually, the shootings involve rival gangs.
“We see a lot of young people getting paid a few hundred euros. They get a weapon, AK-47 or other heavy weapon, and then they get a mission. To shoot a person in the leg, for example, or to try to kill somebody. And they get very little money for this.”
De Landsheer says some of the people his men arrest are as young as 12, and that makes it very dangerous for the whole community.
“The biggest danger is a stray bullet.”
The spike in shootings has forced Belgian authorities to react and, on Thursday, Belgium’s interior minister announced that an extra 40 police officers would be deployed in the problem area.
Jurgen de Landsheer is aware that police alone will not solve this crisis.
“There is no magic solution. We need prevention over repression. We can do our part and be present in the street, but our society also needs to give a future to the young people, do something with them. That’s the social part.”
Back in St Gilles, Salvatore says it’s time for the violence to end.
“Nobody sleeps here at the moment. People talk about moving out, houses are losing value.”
Murielle wants to believe that the worst is now behind.
“We will not be intimidated. We’ll carry on living and we’ll keep on protecting our lovely neighbourhood.”
