Im sara eisen. And im wilfred frost. Were following breaking news out of europe. Just within the last hour or so, explosions at the main airport in brussels leaving several people dead and an unknown number of people hurt. Airport Officials Say two explosions occurred and passengers are being advised to stay away. The facility has been closed. The blasts come four days after the capture of Salah Abdeslam, a suspect in last years paris attack. Dow jones is quoting a u. S. Official as saying the brussels explosions are assumed to be a terror attack in retaliation for Salah Abdeslams arrest. All metro stations in the city have now been closed. Sources reporting explosions in two metro stations in central brussels located near eu buildings. Nbc news has not immediately been able to confirm these reports. This is breaking and developing. Were following a lot. Theres a lot of information out there on social media. Well work hard to get you those stories confirmed by nbc news at this hour. Absolutely right. Its an ongoing story with lots of developments. Lets get to how the markets have reacted to this news. Futures right now pointing to a negative open to the tune of about 35 points for the dow. The s p down about seven points. Nasdaq down about 20. All throughout the morning, we have seen an increasing amount of red in equity market screens. Likewise, the same is true in europe. Lets have a look at the tenyear note in the u. S. Were still at 1. 9 . That yield hasnt moved too much. Lets have a look at european stocks. Red across the screen. Not in too pronounced a fashion. The dax down just shy of 1 . Similar moves across the board for europes main equities. Belgium relatively resilient. European airlines are trading sharply lower on the news. Lets have a look at some of those stocks. Understandably the most affected. Air fransz klm down almost 5 . Were going to talk to a lot of market experts about what to do when you see these terrifying headlines, especially as theyre unfolding. A lot of investors pressing the sell button on european stocks. Theyre buying the safe haven assets. That includes currencies like the japanese yen. Lets show you the action right now in the Foreign Exchange market, where the dollar and the yen are considered the safest bets to hide out during these frightening headlines. Youre seeing that with the euro weaker. Not extreme moves. I dont want to overplay this at all. You are seeing the euro weaker, stronger u. S. Dollar. Stronger japanese yen at 111. 67. Weakness in the pound as well. You and i were talking about this. Brexit. Yeah, i dont think we want to move too early. Theres the sovereignty issue, the economic issue. Thats totally unrelated. Theres the migration of people and the refugee issue. That, perhaps, you could argue is linked. I dont think thats on peoples minds at this stage. Just hoping this story doesnt get much worse. Right. Lets also show you whats happening with oil, which weve all been watching closely. The correlation with the stocks. Under some pressure, though not much. Wti crude staying above 41 a barrel. Brent the International Benchmark down a little bit more. Brent at 41. 45. Gold, which is another socalled safe haven asset, some people say, is actually stronger right now, even though you are seeing a stronger u. S. Dollar. Gold up about ten bucks. That is a little less than 1 . Again, the safety trade is working right now. It is indeed. Lets get another perspective on this story. Joining us from london is steve sedgwick. Talk us through what youre hearing in london. Weve been digesting this in both the hour before the European Equity markets opened and the hour since as well. Just after 7 00 gmt here in london, 8 00 local time in brussels. We had got the first reports of these explosions. Its on the land side of the airport rather than the airside. Initially people were talking about one, possibly two explosions in the checkin area. Now various reports are saying up to four explosions at the airport. We saw, as you were mentioning, a lot of social media, people actually on or near the runways as they were evacuated from the key airport regions. And then within the last hour, the events have taken on another angle as we began to hear about milbeck station, which is a key station for brussels, and that there were explosions at this station, which services the eu institutions. It connects the Brussels Network with the eu institutions. As you would expect, a hearing which was taking place, an ecb central bank hearing at the eu particle p parliament, was suspended immediately. Staff have been told to stay inside or not come to work. Stay at home, do not come near the key buildings there. And there have been various unconfirmed reports about the extent of the metro system being targeted as well, whether it is just one station or whether there are multiple stations being targeted by further potential attacks. In terms of fatalities and casualties, as you say, were being very guarded about what we say. Multiple reports of scores of casualties. Weve seen the pictures from inside the departures terminal. How could there not have been multiple casualties given the scale of the devastation. But in terms of fatalities, there are concerns that the number could be set to grow rapidly. The Prime Minister of belgium, who was due to attend a conference in china, hes been tweeting, saying were following the situation minute by minute, and the priority concern is for the victims and of course for those at the airport and subsequently at the train stations, the metro stations within belgium as well. Of course, putting this into context, it comes only a few days after one of the key suspects, Salah Abdeslam, from the paris attacks of late last year was apprehended in a violent confrontation in brussels as well. So the threat, the Terror Threat in brussels and broader belgium was at level three out of four. That has since been raised to level four. So belgium is now on the highest possible terror alert. Wilf, sara, back to you. Steve, thank you very much for the update. Well come back to you often as we continue to learn more. In the meantime, joining us on the cnbc newsline, msnbc military analyst, retired colonel jack jacobs. Thanks for jumping on the phone. We need your expertise on terror. First, your message a little after 10 00 a. M. To the people of brussels as these events continue to unfold. Multiple blasts at metro stations and airports, in keeping safe this morning. Yeah, its kind of interesting. A lot of people talking about this as a retaliation for the capture of Salah Abdeslam. But we already know that he and his cell were already planning other attacks in any case. Though theres no such thing as a good coincidence, the fact of the matter is these attacks may just have been other attacks that had already been planned and were carried out by the other cells, loosely organized cells in brussels and perhaps in paris. Theres Something Else to keep in mind. That is that europe in general has had something of an attitude of complacency for years about the inherent problem in places like brussels, north of paris, and so on, where you had disaffected people who were not part of the system and so on. And not very much intelligence was developed over a period of years when it should have been put together. Now the European Union in general and Police Forces in particular are going to have to play catch up. Thats going to be very hard to do, especially in circumstances like this. Colonel jacobs, as we learn from the paris attacks, there was a high level of coordinations, multiple attacks happening in a very quick space of time. Clearly weve got at least one metro station and one airport under attack today. Other reports of possibly more. How much scarier is it when you see that level of coordination that we saw, both in paris and now in brussels . Well, its extremely scary. As you can see, airports and other Mass Transportation hubs across europe are taking extra precautions, but without actually being able to follow, identify and follow the individuals in various cells in a number of european cities, without being able to do that effectively, its going to be extremely difficult to prevent future attacks. It always looks as if this is basically a kneejerk reaction when terror attacks occur. And it is true that there has been some progress made in infiltrating organizations, but not nearly enough. The difficulty, as you can see in the markets, is very bad. Long term, its going to be tough to keep people satisfied that the authorities are doing a sufficient amount of Intelligence Development and coordination in order to prevent future attacks. And coordination is really important. You brought it up. There is insufficient coordination. Not only within the eu but among nation states outside the eu. Just take the United States as an example. We have a director of National Intelligence whose job it is to coordinate intelligence activities across a wide spectrum of intelligence organizations inside the United States and still coordination is not good enough to prevent the kind of things we see in europe. Better coordination, better intelligence sharing, and better supervision over suspected people is whats actually required. What about the coordination, colonel jacobs, of the terrorists . What have we learned so far about how intricate and sophisticated this web is . Clearly we are learning new details about whats happening in brussels. How high of alert does france need to be on . Do metro stations and airports across the eu need to be on it . Well, they need to be on the highest possible alert. But the problem is they go on it and then come off. Its not good enough to have a level of complacency that particularly the European Union has had over the years. Keeping an eye on people requires, first, the ability to identify them. Even thats not good enough. It takes enormous resources to do all of this. Resources just are not available. Im talking about people on the one hand, time on the other, and money, insufficient amounts of money has been spent on both sides of the atlantic. And the question that you raise about coordination among cells is interesting. Some cells are loosely organized, and others are not. It sounds and looks like theres central direction and in some cases there is, particularly from outside the country where the terror attacks occur. A lot of these organizations, these cells, these people are selfsustaining. Putting together explosives is really very, very easy. It doesnt take very much in the way of assets. All it takes is time. A little bit of ability that can be trained, and a determination to get it done. So in certain respects, its even worse if theyre uncoordinated and fragmented because theyre much more difficult to identify and take down. Its much easier when theres a chain of command and you can follow it up and down and collect everybody along that chain of command. When its fragmented like this, not only fragmented among countries, but fragmented even within countries, the intelligence requirements are much, much greater, and its much more difficult to ascertain whos going to do what next. Colonel jacobs, thank you very much for joining us on the newsline this morning. You bet it. Still to come, continuing coverage of this mornings attacks in brussels. Former nato supreme allied commander wesley clark will join us live with his take on the Terror Threat. Plus, a top Global Market strategist from jpmorgan will join us with reaction from around the world. European stocks selling off. Nothing dramatic, but sharp selloffs in airlines and leisure stocks. Worldwide exchange will be back with continuing coverage of the brussels attacks. Youre not gonna watch it no, youre not gonna watch it we cant let you download on the goooooo youll just have to miss it yeah, youll just have to miss it we cant let you download. Uh, no thanks. I have x1 from xfinity so. Dont fall for directv. Xfinity lets you download your shows from anywhere. I used to like that song. Welcome back to Worldwide Exchange. If youre just waking up, there have been explosions at the airport in brussels. Officials say two explosions occurred, and passengers are being advised to stay away. The facility has been closed. Belgian Police Confirm a separate explosion near the European Union institution headquarters. The u. S. Embassy is recommending u. S. Citizens to avoid all Public Transportation. The blasts come four days after the capture of Salah Abdeslam, a suspect in last years paris terror attacks. And we are seeing a Global Market reaction to this developing story. European stocks took a leg lower as the headlines started coming out from brussels. Were not talking about an extreme selloff. Less than 1 for the german dax. But we are seeing this rush into safe haven assets like german bonds, for instance, which got a bid during the headlines in the last hour. We are seeing red across the screen. Well dive a little deeper into that through the hour because some of the selling is being done in the travel and leisure transportation stocks, which of course bear the brunt of the immediate fear of whats coming out of brussels. U. S. Equity futures also took a leg lower. Theyre down but not as much as european equities. S p futures down about 0. 4 . Dow futures down about 0. 25 . Well continue to watch that. Nasdaq futures down 18, or 0. 4 . Some of the Immediate Reaction is happening in the currency market as well, where the yen is rising as investors look for a safe haven to hide out. Gold is rising. The japanese yen, 111. 65. But again, dont want to overplay the moves. Were talking about a quarter percentage point move. You saw the charts sort of turn over in the last hour as thee headlines started coming out. Definitely a change in sentiment and direction. Lets discuss this further. Joining us on the cnbc newsline, retired general wesley clark and former nato commander. Thank you very much for joining us. I suppose as we look at the more headlines coming out of this story weve got, multiple explosions at the airport and other metro stations involved too, it seems therefore that this was a strategic, planned attack, not something impromptu. Does that increase the level of worry . Well, i think it does increase the level of concern. To plan a coordinated attack like this, there has to have been some degree of communication between different groups. Now, whether that was all done on a persontoperson basis in the slums of brussels or in some outlying place or even across a border, we dont know yet. But all of us who follow this closely have anticipated that there be more trouble in brussels. Brussels is a relatively open city. Its very, very international. And theres an International City with lots of diplomats in it, lots of movement, lots of different nationalities. People can hide out. We know in the past that the Belgian Police have not been as capable, not been resourced properly to really follow and work these cases. Theyre trying to fix that now. But this is going to require more resources and more intrusion into peoples lives. It kills the debate between privacy and security in europe further toward the security side. We are following the situation minute by minute, tweets the belgian Prime Minister. In a way, its challenging to cover this with so many details still unknown. The story is still developing with so much information and misinformation on places like twitter and social media. How much more difficult does that make the job of police, law enforcement, investigators, with so many moving parts and so much information out there. Well, youre always going to have a lot of inaccurate and incomplete information in the immediate aftermath of an incident. When you have multiple incidents, its multiplied. But im sure that the Belgian Police are doing everything they can to stop movement and try to hold people in place around the airport and around the metro stations. They do have camera surveillance in many of these locations. They will be going through that. We can expect that theyll be getting help from allied Intelligence Services to the extent that those services are able to help them. General clark, you said at the top of our interview that you and people like yourself who look at these things closely have always thought that brussels could be a ripe city for attack. Why is that specifically . Brussels has always had a high population of foreigners in it, and its always had some terrorist cells. Even when i was nato commander in 1999 during the kosovo operation, my car was my official military car was stolen by a group in brussels. We later recovered the car, but they were north african terrorists who had stolen the car. We never found out who they were, but we got the car back. So this goes back years and years and years of trouble in the making in brussels and in belgium in general. Does this suggest that it has anything to do with the paris attacks . We mentioned the timing. It comes after friday, when the most wanted man in europe was finally found by Belgian Police. It was revealed that he was planning other attacks, that there were other attacks in the making. Does this suggest there was more at work, that this was a wider effort than originally thought . Well, of course the Belgian Police didnt tell us how what their suspicions were during this. Certainly if any Group Claims Responsibility for these attacks, theyre probably going to say they were in retaliation for the capture of this man. But these attacks are months and months and months in the planning. And it could be that there were even larger attacks planned, and the arrest of this individual sparked the groups concern and they decided