Irish Examiner view: Testing time for Europe amid terror attacks 

The killing of two Swedish football fans in Brussels adds a new layer of tension

Belgian police stand close to where a suspected Tunisian extremist accused of killing two Swedish soccer fans was shot dead. The images coming through from Brussels late on Monday night were wearyingly familiar. Picture: Martin Meissner/AP

The images coming through from Brussels late on Monday night were wearyingly familiar. The iterations vary slightly, but emergency response vehicles parked haphazardly under street lights, first responders milling around on the fringes of a fresh crime scene — this is the visual shorthand for another terrorist attack.

The murders in the Belgian capital come at a particularly fraught time. The Russian invasion of Ukraine continues to cast a long shadow across Europe, and the savagery in the Israel-Hamas conflict ramped up on Tuesday night with hundreds of casualties reported in an attack on a hospital.