The European Commission on Wednesday proposed adding seven countries including Saudi Arabia to the EU's money-laundering blacklist of governments that do too little to thwart the financing of terrorism and organized crime.

The move comes as tensions between Riyadh and European capitals are heightened over the murder last year of the columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Around 70 people were arrested Saturday in the Belgian capital Brussels during copycat "yellow vest" demonstrations rocking neighbouring France, police said.

Police shot dead one suspect on Tuesday during a major Belgian-French anti-terror operation in Brussels linked to the Paris attacks, after gunmen opened fire and wounded four officers.

Up to 20,000 people demonstrated in the Belgian capital Sunday in support of refugees, demanding they be welcomed and treated properly.

The organizers, a collection of local and international rights groups, said there were "20,000 people in Brussels to say welcome to refugees."

NATO head Jens Stoltenberg told Agence France Presse Thursday he was concerned by Russia's "substantial" military build-up in Syria and urged Moscow to play a constructive role in the fight against Islamic State jihadis.

"It underlines the importance of Russia making clear what are their intentions," Stoltenberg told Agence France Presse in an interview at NATO HQ in Brussels.

Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders has said the only way to halt the flow of migrants pouring into Europe is to end the war in Syria, advising the European Union to hold talks with Lebanese officials.

Koenders, who visited a refugee camp in the eastern Bekaa Valley on Tuesday, said: "It is not only a question of border controls and quotas. If the war in Syria does not end, people will keep coming."

The U.N. refugee chief called Tuesday for European states to show solidarity in their response to the continent's worst migration crisis since World War II, ahead of emergency EU talks.

"There is no way to resolve a crisis of this dimension if each country acts alone and based solely on its own interests," United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres told Portuguese broadcaster RTP.

The European Parliament on Thursday backed plans to relocate 120,000 refugees around the EU to help the frontline states of Greece, Hungary and Italy, in a move that raised pressure on ministers to adopt the proposals next week.

In an emergency vote called after EU interior ministers failed to back the scheme on Monday, lawmakers approved the plans by the European Commission -- the EU's executive -- by 372 votes to 124 with 54 abstentions.

Hungary sealed its border with Serbia on Tuesday to stem the massive influx of refugees as Germany slammed the "disgraceful" refusal of other EU countries to accept more migrants after 22 died in yet another shipwreck.

Budapest's move came after Austria and Slovakian authorities followed Germany's lead in reimposing border controls, a further body blow to Europe's cherished passport-free Schengen zone as the EU's border agency said more than half a million migrants had been counted at the bloc's borders so far this year.

Lebanon is expected to participate on Tuesday in a conference of states hosting Syrian refugees in Brussels, the head of the delegation, MP Michel Moussa, said.

Moussa told An Nahar newspaper published on Monday that he will call in his speech for providing Lebanon with promised assistance to confront the refugee crisis and to redistribute the displaced Syrians on countries capable of hosting them.