Belgian police killed two suspected terrorists and arrested a third in a shootout in the eastern town of Verviers, preventing a possible "major" attack, authorities said.

The raid, part of several anti-terror operations yesterday by the police, came after suspected Islamist gunmen last week killed 17 people in three days of attacks in and around Paris, including nine journalists at satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

The group in Verviers appeared to have no link with the shootings in France, according to the federal prosecutors' office in Brussels. The suspects, some of whom police believed had recently returned from Syria, opened fire with automatic weapons as officers moved in, Eric Van Der Sypt, a spokesman for the prosecutors, told reporters late Thursday in Brussels. All of the suspects had Belgian citizenship.