New Antwerp Blast Destroys Door, Message Left on Facade

A fresh explosion struck Antwerp overnight, destroying the glass front door of an apartment building near the city park and leaving a graffiti message apparently aimed at a specific individual, VRT NWS reported. No one was injured, but the blast adds to a string of explosive attacks that have made targeted bombings an alarming recurring feature of Belgium’s second-largest city.

According to VRT NWS, the device detonated during the night of 26-27 September at an apartment block by the Stadspark. The glass entrance door was shattered, and a message reading “Rassul hoer” (“Rassul whore”) was spray-painted on a wall of the building, appearing to single out a named target. Police have opened an investigation, and no suspect has been arrested.

A Week of Explosions

The Stadspark blast follows two other explosions earlier the same week in Antwerp-Noord. As VRT NWS detailed, two devices detonated roughly five minutes apart around 1:30 a.m. on the night of Sunday 20 into Monday 21 September — first at a home on Hollandstraat, then at a nearby house on Osystraat. Two homes and a car were damaged, but no one was hurt.

“There are indications to assume that both attacks are linked to each other,” Antwerp police spokesperson Kim Bastiaens said, noting that the same message was left on both facades. Police said a link to the drug milieu “cannot be excluded,” and the forensic lab and the Belgian bomb disposal unit DOVO attended the scenes.

The Osystraat house had been targeted before. On 2 April 2023, a major attack there damaged more than 20 homes and six cars across four surrounding streets, lightly injuring one resident with flying glass. A Dutch national was later convicted to four years in prison; an appeal has been filed.

The Drug Connection

Such explosions are frequently linked to the drug trade, and Antwerp’s port — one of Europe’s main entry points for cocaine — has long fueled gang conflicts that spill into residential streets. Violent incidents have not abated. According to VRT NWS, Antwerp province recorded 91 drug-related violence incidents in 2024, a rise of nearly 30 percent compared with all of 2023 — covering explosions and shootings as well as kidnappings, torture and threats.

“A lot of drugs enter via the Port of Antwerp. That is big business and causes wars between gangs active in the drug trade. The street violence is a consequence of that,” journalist Caroline Van den Berghe explained in that report.

The political reaction was swift. Ortwin Depoortere, a Vlaams Belang member of parliament who chairs the Chamber’s Interior Committee, said the escapes from injury were sheer luck. “That no dead or wounded fell here is simply a matter of pure luck,” he said in a party statement. “Antwerp is again being used as a battlefield by the drugs mafia.”

Depoortere criticized what he called years of unfulfilled promises. “After years of taskforces, promises and tough statements, the result stays the same: another attack, the umpteenth, in the middle of the night,” he said, urging the De Wever government to “destroy the drugs mafia’s business model,” seize criminal assets and impose long prison sentences. “Our people have a right to a night’s rest without explosives.”

Media reporting has linked the Osystraat target to the parental home of an Antwerp drug criminal identified in press accounts as Xavier P., and to a possible connection with a missing shipment of roughly 800 kilograms of cocaine — a link that has not been officially confirmed.

What to Watch

Whether the Stadspark explosion is connected to the earlier Antwerp-Noord attacks remains unknown, and the meaning and target of the “Rassul hoer” message have not been officially established. No suspect has been arrested in any of this week’s incidents.

The pattern, however, is clear: explosions at homes are routinely used to intimidate individuals over drug debts or missing shipments, and graffiti targeting individuals has become a recurring signature of such attacks. For residents near the Stadspark and in Antwerp-Noord, the immediate question is whether this week’s blasts mark another escalation in a conflict that has already reshaped the city’s sense of safety — and whether investigators can establish the links that would let authorities strike at those ordering the attacks, not just those carrying them out.