Belgium's violent Islamic extremism problem has reached such a scale it now appears to be beyond the ability of European authorities to control, terrorism experts have said in the wake of the latest bomb attacks in Brussels.

The co-ordinated attacks on the airport and train station in the Belgian capital were very likely carried out by jihadists who were part of the same extensive network as the Paris attackers, the experts said.

Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs has urged people to "reconsider your need to travel" to Belgium - an escalation on its previous travel advice to show "a high degree of caution".

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop issued a swift condemnation of the attacks and said her department was "urgently seeking" to find out if any Australians were affected.

The fact that authorities were still failing to contain the wave of violent extremism even after the November Paris attacks and subsequent massive manhunt that netted the final Paris plotter, Salah Abdeslam, just five days ago suggested the problem was beyond the security agencies of Belgium and its neighbours, experts said.

Edwin Bakker, director of the Centre for Terrorism and Counter Terrorism at Leiden University in The Hague, said with the highest number per capita of extremists travelling to and from Syria, Belgium seemed to have lost control of the problem.

"Apparently the intelligence position is not good enough to find these people or even to find the most wanted terrorist in Europe," he said of Abdeslam, the Belgian-born French suspect who was arrested on Friday after a four-month manhunt.

"It took them several months and this guy was not hiding on his own. That makes it a bit embarrassing for the intelligence community in Belgium.

"The events of today increase both worries about the intelligence position of Belgian authorities as well as how many supporters there are.

"They're not that amateuristic either. These support groups are a big worry and in some countries they run in the hundreds if not the thousands and that's too many for the authorities to monitor."

More concerning still, it was not just Belgian authorities but French agencies who were involved in hunting Abdeslam and trying to break up the extensive networks of which he was part.

"You hope the Muslim communities will be their eyes and ears but apparently that didn't happen so there are a lot of worries," Professor Bakker said.

Both Professor Bakker and Monash University terrorism expert Greg Barton said there was a strong chance that the Brussels attacks were carried out by extremists who were on the run after the Abdeslam arrest and decided they might as well launch the assault before they were caught.

Professor Barton said it was "almost certain" the attack was linked to associates of Abdeslam's, perhaps those who'd fled before police launched the raid that captured the Paris attacker in the notorious Molenbeek district of Brussels.

"Given they haven't arrested other people, it seems

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