(Bloomberg) -- Brussels, the European Union’s administrative capital, has been left reeling by a spate of drug-related shootings just a few blocks away from the city’s hordes of diplomats and bureaucrats.

“In the past few days we again have been confronted with crimes linked to drugs,” Belgian Justice Minister Paul Van Tigchelt told reporters on Thursday. “What has happened is simply unacceptable.”

Belgium, and its biggest city, has become a magnet for international crime networks, said Van Tigchelt. But he said the wave of violence is part of a global problem that requires global solutions. From Mexican cartels to the Albanian mob which uses Brussels as a center for the distribution, “they do not know frontiers,” he said. “We take measures and book results but it’s an uphill battle.”

This month’s attacks follow a December shooting on one of Brussels fanciest shopping streets, also suspected of being connected to drugs. Almost a quarter of investigative resources were dedicated to organized drug-related crimes last year, the federal police said in a report on Thursday. Belgian courts handed down jail terms adding up to 4,707 years in 2023 of which nearly half involved convictions for drug-related crimes. 

Read More: Belgium Tackles Gangs Shipping Drugs to South America by Courier

Although small, Belgium, along with the Netherlands, plays an outsize role in the continent’s illegal drugs market. Belgian authorities seized a record 121 metric tons of cocaine at the Port of Antwerp-Bruges, Europe’s second-largest, in 2023, a 10% increase from the previous year. 

Following the escalation of violence, local and national police services plan to thrash out a coherent approach to the issue, federal prosecutors said.

--With assistance from Max Ramsay.

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