Majim Laachraoui, the suspected bombmaker in the Paris attacks, was one of two suicide terrorists who targeted the Brussels airport, officials said, indicating both attacks are linked to the same cell of the Islamic State group.
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Reports suggest that a 24-year-old man identified as Najim Laachraoui – his DNA was found on some of the bombs used in the Paris blasts – was also involved in the Brussels attacks.
On Tuesday, Belgian investigators were led to the house by a cab driver who came forward to tell authorities that he drove the suspects from the house to the airport where one of the two attacks took place.
The homemade explosive, while unstable and unsafe to handle, is made with readily available chemicals, making it attractive to terrorists in Europe, while extremists in war zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan prefer safer, military-grade explosives they are able to acquire there.
Jimmie Oxley, an explosives expert and chemistry professor at the University of Rhode Island, said it’s not surprising that TATP continues to be used in such attacks, because “we’ve done nothing to take this particular tool away from them”. They made no mention of the acids required as a catalyst or various chemicals often used to rinse TATP crystals and remove impurities that can be byproducts of the chemical reaction during production.
Without specialized equipment, little about the process can be rushed. A failure to keep the reaction under a certain temperature can cause inadvertent explosions. After a few weeks, it would be much less powerful.
Other details circulating in Brussels matched expectations.
The officials and bomb-disposal technicians requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters.
Scriven King, who served for a decade with the Air Force’s law enforcement arm and now works as a security consultant, said the effectiveness of the bombs used in Paris and Brussels was noteworthy, since TATP can be tricky to work with. It is a relatively stable high explosive, detonating at a speed of more than 5,000 feet per second. In France, attackers packed TATP into their suicide vests and wielded assault rifles, killing 130 people.
“It looks like that the terrorists have again used the TATP explosive, the same kind as in the attacks in Paris”, Belgian newspaper De Standaard reported. The tape was apparently meant to limit the explosive’s exposure to oxygen and slow its decay.
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More recently, TATP is thought to have been used in the soda can bomb that brought down a Russian passenger jet over the Sinai Peninsula in October. This has always been a feature of makeshift bombs, including the unexploded devices recovered in Belgium this week.
