“The danger has not gone away”, said Paul Van Tigchelt, the head of the terror assessment authority.
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Belgian authorities are now hunting a man with a large bag seen talking to Khalid El Bakraoui on CCTV footage at Maalbeek station, who then did not get on to the train, police sources told AFP.
Earlier on Thursday, Belgium’s interior and justice ministers offered to resign over a failure to track an Islamic State militant expelled by Turkey as a suspected fighter and who blew himself up at Brussels Airport.
The police are also still looking for a possible fifth suspect; a man seen entering the Brussels Metro system with suicide bomber Khalid El Bakraoui.
Khalid el-Bakraoui, 27, rented the Brussels flat where Belkaid was shot dead on 15 March, a clear connection to Salah Abdeslam and the Paris attacks.
At least 34 people were killed and 230 injured in Tuesday’s terror attacks on Brussels Airport and the Maelbeek Metro station in the Belgian capital.
The Belgian federal prosecutor’s office said in a statement that Abdeslam appeared at a hearing on Thursday with a suspected accomplice and the court adjourned the proceedings.
Major security lapses in the days and weeks before Tuesday’s terrorist attacks in Brussels grew all the more glaring Thursday with the revelation that Turkish authorities had twice deported one of the suicide bombers at the center of the carnage on suspicion that he was an Islamic State foreign fighter. Turkish officials said he was later released from Dutch custody due to lack of evidence of involvement in extremism.
“They (the Belgians) are allowing members of the separatist terrorist organization to set up tents right next to the European Council, they allow pictures of terrorists to be displayed, they let their flags fly there”, Erdogan said. He was Europe’s most wanted fugitive before being captured in the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek near his childhood home.
European authorities, meanwhile, are calling on the European parliament “as a matter of urgency” to adopt an agreement that would
allow authorities to exchange airport passenger data.
Raids overnight in Belgium led to at least six arrests linked to last Tuesday’s airport and subway bombings.
Highlighting the threat, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said police Thursday had arrested a suspect in the Paris area who was in “the advanced stages” of a plot to attack France.
Mary told reporters in Brussels on Thursday that he asked for a one-month delay on any transfer while he studies the large dossier.
All the Brussels attackers so far identified by police and prosecutors have links to Abdeslam, the sole survivor of the 10 jihadis who carried out November’s Paris attacks on a concert hall, the Stade de France, and a string of cafes and bars killing 130 people. It also raises questions about the extent to which Western nations are effectively sharing information that could prevent attacks.
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The attacks highlighted Belgium’s problem with some 300 locals who have fought in Syria, the biggest contingent from Europe in relation to its national population of 11 million.
