PARIS police evacuated the Gare de l’Est station today following a bomb threat.

A French police official said that the station had been closed “as a precaution,” on the day that US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived to “share a big hug with Paris.”

Mr Kerry laid wreaths at both the Charlie Hebdo magazine’s offices and the kosher supermarket which were hit by terrorist attacks last week.

His visit followed criticism of the US for not sending a top representative to a march in Paris on Sunday which drew 1.5 million people and dozens of world leaders in the wake of the attacks.

Meanwhile, police increased activity across Europe after Belgian police killed two suspected terrorists in a firefight and arrested a third man on Thursday.

Belgian officials claimed that they had averted “imminent” large-scale attacks on police targets after raiding a terror cell in the eastern town of Verviers, near the German border.

Police shot dead the two suspects after they opened fire on officers with heavy weapons when they closed in on them near the city’s train station.

Officers arrested a third man and conducted several search operations in Brussels and its suburbs.

Security was tightened across the country and Jewish schools in Antwerp were closed due to fears of further trouble.

In France, meanwhile, Paris prosecutors said 12 people had been arrested during raids in connection with the attacks carried out by brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi and Amedy Coulibaly.

Nine men and three women were being questioned about “possible logistic support” they may have given to the gunmen, the prosecutor’s office said.

And in Germany, the leader of a group allegedly planning to carry out an attack in Syria was arrested in raids on suspected Islamist sites in and around Berlin by more than 200 police officers.

The arrested man is a 41-year-old of Turkish origin suspected of “leading an Islamist extremist group made up of Turkish and Russian nationals from Chechnya and Dagestan,” police said.

They added that “there was no indication the group had been preparing attacks inside Germany.”