PARIS: Tintin wept. Within hours of Brussels attacks Tuesday tens of thousands of people were sharing images on social media of the country’s most famous creation in tears. With many invoking Herge’s cub reporter — who always got the better of the baddies in the end — one Twitter user put words into the boy hero’s mouth: “Let’s be strong, together and humane faced with these crazies.”

“We are all Belgians,” said a user called Ulysse, who lives in Paris.

French film-maker and graphic novelist Joann Sfar had Tintin consoling his sidekick Captain Haddock: “Sometimes I want to leave for the Moon, Captain.”

But the most shared image of all was one showing a figure dressed in French colors putting an arm around a crying Belgian flag.

As speculation turned to whether the same Daesh cell had planned the attacks on both cities, several other widely-shared cartoons took a more defiant and typically irreverent Belgian tone.

The Twitter hashtags #Belgium and #PrayForBelgium were trending across Europe and the United States as thousands offered their sympathy and support, while in France another hashtag appealing for Muslims not to be blamed made the top three.

Hundreds of people also offered to shelter people stranded by the transport chaos after the attacks with the hashtags #openhouse in English, French and Flemish.

But reaction to the attacks took an uglier turn in Britain where two newspaper columnists Katie Hopkins and Alison Pearson sparked outrage by linking the attacks to the migrant crisis and Britain’s possible exit from the EU.

“Every one of you who said refugees are welcome... are responsible for Brussels,” MailOnline columnist Hopkins tweeted.