BRUSSELS: Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel on Wednesday said the country’s terror alert would stay at the second-highest level, a day after a deadly police raid linked to November’s Paris attacks.

Belgian authorities earlier identified a gunman killed in the raid as a 35-year-old Algerian and said police found a Daesh flag at the scene.

Michel told a press conference that the OCAM national crisis center “maintains its level three alert level, which means a threat is possible and likely.”

Brussels was locked down and the alert level raised to the highest of four shortly after the militant attacks in Paris that killed 130 people, but it was lowered back to three a few days later.

“I want to insist on the fact that the level three is not an ordinary level,” Michel said.

“We have warned for some time that level three was likely to last for some time,” he added.

Michel called on residents to “stay calm and cool-headed” as the investigation continued into Tuesday’s police raid on a suburban house which left one Kalashnikov-wielding suspect dead.

“We will carefully follow the situation over the coming hours,” he said.

Foreign Minister Didier Reynders added: “We have had information for quite some time that an attack could be imminent in Brussels and across Belgium, but nothing specific to the events of yesterday.”

Two people held after the raid in the city linked the November’s Paris attacks were released without charge, prosecutors said, meaning the hunt for suspects involved in the shootout continues.

“The person who was detained in the hospital in Halle and another person who was taken in for questioning after a house search (...) were released by the judge. They were not charged,” the federal prosecutors service said in a statement on Wednesday.

Local mayor Marc-Jean Ghyssels told public broadcaster RTBF that police searches in Forest were over: “The area is totally cleared, totally secured and operations have ended,” he said.

People living in the area, who suffered hours of lockdown after the initial operation turned into a firefight, said they were shocked at the turn of events in their quiet neighborhood.

Schoolboy Maxime, 11, was at home sick when he heard gunfire and helicopters and saw masked commandos on a rooftop. “They had a huge weapon,” he said, adding he had been “very, very scared.”

Federal prosecutors, who have been coordinating the investigation in Belgium into the Paris attacks, held a news conference at 10:30 a.m. (0930 GMT) on Wednesday.

Investigators believe much of the planning and preparation for the Paris assault was conducted in Brussels by young French and Belgian nationals, some of whom fought in Syria. Belgian security forces have been actively hunting suspects and associates of the militants involved in the Paris attacks.

One of the prime suspects, 26-year-old Brussels-based Frenchman Salah Abdeslam, is still on the run. He left Paris hours after his brother blew himself up outside a cafe. Belgian authorities are holding 10 people who have been arrested in the months since the attacks, mostly for helping Abdeslam.