Security analysts predicted this week that police raids would continue throughout the city for weeks and would particularly focus on the neighborhoods of Schaerbeek or Molenbeek, where a suspected Paris attacker was arrested last week.
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The long list of blunders by Belgian intelligence is putting pressure on the government and raising urgent questions across Europe about whether Tuesday’s attack in Brussels – which left 31 dead and 300 wounded – could have been prevented.
One of the detainees was apprehended in the Schaerbeek area of northern Brussels.
The operation to arrest one of the suspects involved as many as 50 officers, including federal police, heavy weaponry and a bomb squad with an ordinance disposal robot, according to witnesses.
Belgian authorities are now seeking a new suspect with a large bag captured on CCTV talking to Khalid El Bakraoui at Maalbeek station, who then did not get on to the train with the bomber, police sources told AFP.
Eyewitnesses said they saw police shoot a man carrying a machine gun who had emerged from an underpass.
Meanwhile, Abdeslam’s lawyer, Sven Mary, said his client is not fighting extradition to France, which is seeking his extradition from Belgium to face potential terrorism charges.
Prime Minister Charles Michel, meeting with Kerry, vowed to step up counterterrorism cooperation with the US and others. Authorities have identified the third suicide bomber as Najim Laachraoui, a Moroccan-born Belgian and suspected bomb maker for European plots by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL.
His DNA was also recovered at several safe houses in Belgium used by the cell. ‘We were not aware of any link with the Netherlands, ‘ the minister said. Authorities said neither was killed in the bombings, and an intense manhunt remained underway across Brussels on Thursday night.
French President François Hollande says the Islamist militant network behind the Brussels bombings and November’s Paris attacks is being destroyed.
Three days before this week’s Brussels attacks, police showed photos of the suicide bombers to Salah Abdeslam, whom they had just arrested for his part in the November Paris killings, and failed to challenge his claim not to know them, a report said on Friday. That man was seen in airport surveillance footage walking alongside two of the other suspects shortly before the explosions.
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At least 32 people were killed and 270 injured when suicide bombs ripped through the airport and a Metro station on Tuesday morning. RTBF said it is not clear whether that man was killed in the attack.
