Drug gangs opened fire on a pizzeria on a square in the St Gilles district of Brussels last Monday night, sending diners, including families with children on the terrace, to the floor and leaving bullet marks across the frontage. It was the third shooting in that neighbourhood in three days; a suspected dealer had been shot in the leg nearby the day before, and the stain from the pool of blood was still visible on the pavement afterwards. Such violence has become routine in the Belgian capital, which recorded more than 100 drug-trafficking shootings in 2025 and over 65 so far this year, in a district only minutes from the Midi international station that receives trains from London and Paris. Jurgen de Landsheer, chief of Brussels South Police, said a single successful dealing point can take up to 50,000 euros a day, about 43,000 pounds, and that officers count more than 200 dealing points across the city. Crack has spread among the poorest residents, and transactions happen in the open. He said gangs were borrowing methods from Marseille, though he insisted Brussels had no no-go zones and that his officers went everywhere. The port of Antwerp, 40km away, has recorded successive years of record cocaine seizures as European ports absorb the trade. The violence escalated last weekend when two men on a scooter fired several rounds from what appeared to be an AK-47 at the door of a police station, captured on CCTV, the first time criminals had targeted police rather than rival gangs. De Landsheer said some of those arrested were as young as 12, recruited for a few hundred euros to wound or kill on instruction, and that the greatest danger was a stray bullet. Belgium's interior minister responded on Thursday by announcing 40 extra officers for the affected area, while the police chief argued that prevention, not repression alone, would decide the outcome.