“Je suis bruxellois. Ik ben Brussel”, Kerry said after brief remarks in French and Dutch, expressing solidarity in its two languages that he too felt a citizen of the Belgian capital.
Advertisement
Police use a robotic device as they take part in a search in the Brussels borough of Schaerbeek following Tuesday’s bombings in Brussels, Belgium, March 24, 2016.
Two of the suspected suicide bombers in the attacks on Brussels’s main airport and a busy metro station were identified earlier by Belgian authorities as Brussels-born brothers Ibrahim and Khalid El Bakraoui. After arresting a French national Thursday morning, Cazeneuve said police uncovered an attack plot in the “advanced stage” of preparation.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking in a news conference Friday with Belgium Prime Minister Charles Michel, confirmed that a small number of Americans died in the Brussels attacks, but didn’t say how many.
Two of those arrested have been named as Tawfik A., and Salah A. The man detained following the Schaerbeek operation, has not yet been named. A police source said investigators found acetone peroxide explosives in the apartment.
“You know he was interviewed from the first time on Saturday”.
Turkey has said it arrested and deported one of the bombers, Brahim el-Bakraoui, last June, warning Belgium he was a “foreign fighter” – but the message was “ignored”.
Abdeslam has stopped cooperating with police and “no longer wants to talk”, said Belgian Justice Minister Koen Geens.
“I’m no psychologist, no idea”, said Mourad.
Other eyewitnesses reported seeing police shoot at a man armed with a machine gun who had emerged from an underpass, hitting him in the legs, reported the BBC.
He added that a “painstaking” investigation had led officials to conclude that there were no tangible links to the attacks in Paris or Brussels at this stage.
Details are still emerging on exactly who the Schaerbeek suspect is and what role he played in these terror plots.
The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks.
In the wake of the suburban raids French President Francois Hollande said the Islamist militant network behind attacks in Paris and Brussels is being destroyed, but there remain other cells that continue to pose a threat.
Najim Laachraoui (left) is seen in footage from a security camera at Brussels airport on Tuesday.
Prosecutors said the arrests were linked to a raid in Paris on Thursday, where an attack was apparently foiled.
Advertisement
Abdeslam is also believed to have driven the vehicle that brought the third Brussels suicide bomber, Najim Laachraoui, to Austria from Hungary in September previous year.
