Mr. Kerry said officers of the Federal Bureau of Investigation were already involved in the Brussels probe. 2015 Brussels court conviction for IS recruitment, along with Paris attacks ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud.
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The area was closed of and a nearby tram was evacuated as armed police and military vehicles were seen in the area.
Hundreds of people gathered late into the night at the Place de la Bourse in Brussels to mourn the victims of the suicide attacks on the city’s airport and metro on Tuesday.
An explosion has reportedly been heard during a police operation in Schaerbeek. The Public prosecutor will decide whether to bring any charges against those detained later on Friday.
Belgian authorities and the Dutch Embassy positively identified the remains of Alexander and Sascha Pinczowski.
The deaths were confirmed by James Cain, whose daughter was engaged to Alexander Pinczowski. Cain is the father of Alexander’s fiancé, Cameron Cain. His brother Mourad said he searched in vain for his brother on Facebook to try to persuade him to come home but they had had no contact with him since he left. Seven have been detained in Brussels, two in Germany and one in France.
Turkey has said that it arrested and deported one of the bombers, Brahim el-Bakraoui last June, and had warned Belgium that he was a “foreign fighter” – but the message was “ignored”.
Local prosecutors couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on the Good Friday holiday.
The man who was wearing a hat and a cream jacket has not been named. Behind him, flags or symbols from a dozen countries adorned the square.
David Dixon, a British citizen, texted his aunt to tell her he was safe after the explosions at the airport.
Interior Minister Jan Jambon and Justice Minister Koen Geens tendered their resignations to Prime Minister Charles Michel, who asked them to stay on.
A tip-off from a taxi driver who “gave a lift to three persons who had big bags” led cops to the flat.
Both brothers have a criminal records – but have not been linked by the police to terrorism until now.
Belgium’s security alert has now been lowered to its second lowest level and the airport could return to operation on Monday.
VTM also reported that police found a “bag of explosives” during the raid. US officials said Thursday that they were on an American terrorism watch list.
Three of the suspects were arrested “outside the door of the federal prosecutor’s office”, a spokesperson said.
Abdeslam, 26, was arrested in Brussels last week, appeared briefly in court on Thursday, and is likely to be extradited to France within weeks.
Raids in northwest Paris thwarted what officials are calling an “advanced stage” terror attack.
“He was part of a terrorist network that planned to strike France”.
He was sentenced along with Abdelhamid Abaaoud, considered the main organiser of the Paris attacks and killed in a police raid in Paris days later.
Police had completely sealed off the area in the Schaerbeek district, a reporter at the scene said.
– By Associated Press Writers Lori Hinnant in Paris and John-Thor Dahlburg in Brussels.
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Abdeslam’s lawyer Sven Mary said Thursday his client now did not want to fight extradition to Paris and insisted he “didn’t know” in advance about the Brussels attacks. The group has claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s bombings at the airport departure terminal and a downtown Metro stop that killed 31 people and wounded 270.
