Europe stepped up pressure on Syria on Tuesday as several nations recalled their ambassadors from Damascus and the EU considered new sanctions to cut the regime's access to cash.

France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands decided to bring back their envoys for consultations, joining Britain and Belgium to protest the regime's relentless opposition crackdown. The United States has closed its embassy.

Visiting Belgian Defense Minister Pieter De Crem stressed on Thursday his country’s support for Lebanon’s efforts to maintain security and develop the demining program.

He said after holding talks with his Lebanese counterpart Fayez Ghosn that Belgium is keen on Lebanon’s stability.

Belgian surgeons have successfully performed the country's first-ever face transplant, the 19th in the world, doctors announced Saturday.

Officials at the University Hospital of Ghent said a team of 65 surgeons and medical staff had performed the 20-hour operation a week earlier on a Belgian man with a severely mutilated face.

Two leading Syrian opposition groups voiced their desire Thursday to resolve a rift and unite against President Bashar al-Assad's regime, Belgium's foreign minister said after talks with the two.

Saying divisions were "playing in the hands of the Syrian regime," Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders called for a "unified opposition platform," his office said in a statement.

Belgium's public sector workers went on strike Thursday to protest a pension reform plan as the latest anti-austerity movement to grip Europe shut down transport links across the kingdom.

The strike halted rail traffic, including Thalys services to France, Germany and the Netherlands, and the Eurostar link to Britain.

A lone gunman armed with grenades opened fire on a square packed with children and Christmas shoppers in the eastern Belgian city of Liege Tuesday, killing three people and wounding 75.

Officials named the gunman -- who was himself also killed in circumstances that are not yet clear -- as Nordine Amrani, 33, a known criminal who had been summoned by police that morning but who never showed up.

Belgium's new government won a parliamentary confidence vote Saturday, the last hurdle in resolving a political crisis in the linguistically divided country that lasted a record-breaking 541 days.

Of 143 deputies present, 89 voted in favor of the six-party administration headed by Elie Di Rupo, a French-speaking socialist, with 54, notably Flemish separatists, against.

Political parties in Belgium, which has been without a government for 535 days, agreed Wednesday on the blueprint of a ruling coalition to be headed by French-speaking Socialist Elio Di Rupo.

"There is a global agreement, on the reform of the state, socio-economic questions and a government platform," a source close to the negotiations told Agence France Presse.

Eurozone finance ministers turned to the IMF for more help to keep the monetary union together late Tuesday after they missed their goal of boosting their own bailout fund to one trillion Euros.

With fears rising that Italy will need a bailout after its borrowing costs soared to record heights, ministers scrambled to tame a debt crisis threatening to break apart the 17-nation Eurozone.

Europe is reeling from warnings it faces a "deep depression" if the eurozone collapses and that every EU nation's credit rating could be hit without firm action to resolve the debt crisis.

An updated growth report from the OECD on Monday said the crisis was now just one step away from plunging advanced economies into an abyss of recession and could trigger waves of bankruptcies.