Belgians tweet cat pictures during police raids

Brussles: When Belgian authorities asked people to stop commenting on ongoing police operations in social media to avoid tipping off suspects during Sunday's raids, people unexpectedly responded by tweeting cat pictures.

The hashtag #BrusselsLockdown suddenly shifted from a serious to humorous tweets with a flood of pictures of cats in all kinds of situations -holding their paws up as captured suspects, posing as police snipers with automatic weapons, and ignoring police warnings to stay away from windows.

One tweet showed Prime Minister Charles Michel with a penciled in cat's moustache.

Federal prosecutor Eric Van Der Sypt says police "want to thank the press and social media users because they took the need of this operation into account."

The tweets came as police carried out 22 raids in Brussels and southern Charleroi in which 16 suspects were detained, but not Paris fugitive Salah Abdeslam.

See below some of the tweets from Belgians and the response from across the world.