“Belgian police arrested six people in the Brussels suburb of Schaerbeek on Thursday as the manhunt for suspects in Brussels+Airport%2C+Metro+Stations%2C+Causing+Lockdown” Tuesday’s terrorist attacks targeting Zaventem airport and Maelbeek metro station continues.
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That network also included Abdelhamid Abbaoud, the Paris attack ringleader, and Najim Laachraoui, one of the three suicide bombers who struck Brussels this week.
Belgian authorities were searching Wednesday for a top suspect in the country’s deadliest attacks in decades, as the European Union’s capital awoke under guard and with limited public transport after scores were killed and injured in bombings on the Brussels airport and a subway station.
Belgium’s interior minister blamed police negligence on Friday for failing to track an Islamic State militant expelled by Turkey a year ago who blew himself up at Brussels airport on Tuesday. A computer in a nearby trash bin also revealed the will of Ibrahim El Bakraoui, one of the Brussels airport suicide bombers.
Prosecutors said that the arrests were linked to a raid in Paris on Thursday, where an attack was apparently foiled.
This video includes clips from ABC and Deutsche Welle and images from the Belgian Federal Police and Getty Images.
A total of ten people have now been arrested in connection with the Brussels terror attacks in the last 48 hours.
Some of the Brussels attackers had been on the run from authorities in France and Belgium but were still able to hide in safe houses, assemble bombs and carry out linked attacks.
In the same statement, the prosecutor’s office said that three more arrests were made in Brussels on Friday. His lawyer, who had initially vowed to fight extradition, said Abdeslam now wants to be sent to France as soon as possible.
Interior minister Jan Jambon and Justice Minister Koen Geens both tendered their resignations yesterday over the claims that Ibrahim El Bakraoui had slipped through the net despite being arrested by Turkey near the Syrian border and deported to the Netherlands.
“Someone in our police apparatus blundered”, he said.
A veteran Islamist fighter in Syria, he is also suspected of making explosive belts for November’s Paris attacks.
Police earlier this week found a large stash of explosives in an apartment in Schaerbeek believed to have been used by suicide bombers in Tuesday’s attacks.
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The attack in Brussels and the events in Paris are renewing concerns about battling ISIS in Europe.
