It’s not the first time that Turkey has deported suspected terrorists.
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“The United States is praying and grieving with you for the loved ones of those cruelly taken from us, including Americans, and for the many who were injured in these despicable attacks”, Kerry said after meeting Prime Minister Charles Michel.
This image provided by the Belgian Federal Police shows a man at Belgium’s Zaventem airport whom officials have identified as Ibrahim el Bakraoui.
Officials say that the suspected bomb-maker from the Paris attacks was one of the two suicide bombers at the Brussels airport on Tuesday.
The police have not yet identified their third suspect, but have released this photo in a search appeal for the man in the beige jacket.
He is suspected of rigging up the suicide vests that helped kill 34 in twin attacks yesterday and is believed to have done the same for the Paris attacks.
Two of the other attackers – one in the airport and the other in the subway – were brothers who had rap sheets for armed robbery, but no known links to terrorist groups, Belgian prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said.
“It could have happened to me”, said security guard Gregory Lupant, who added he was anxious about colleagues “who had not been heard from, and others who had lost a leg or finger”.
As government offices, schools and residents held a moment of silence to honor the dead, the mood was defiance mixed with anxiety that others involved in the attacks are still at large.
Thousands of people gathered at Place de la Bourse in the center of downtown Brussels – including dozens of students chanting “stop the war” – in solidarity with those killed.
Belgian authorities had already been hunting the Bakraoui brothers, both Belgian nationals with long criminal records, over their links to Abdeslam.
They issued a wanted notice for Laachraoui on Monday (21 March), the day before the attacks, with officials saying he had travelled to Hungary with Abdeslam a year ago and that his DNA was found on explosives linked to the Paris rampage.
Investigators believe the cell accelerated the plan when Belgian police discovered Abdeslam’s hideout in the Forest district of Brussels last week.
Prosecutors have revealed his explosive device, which failed to detonate, was the largest of them all. Prosecutors said on Tuesday an unexploded bomb, an IS flag and bomb-making materials had been found.
At least 31 people were killed and 271 wounded in the attacks, the prosecutor said.
On Friday, he warned Europe that the kind of deadly bomb that struck Ankara this month, killing at least 37 people, could also hit Europe – maybe even the seat of the EU.
The health ministry said late Wednesday that the number of people injured had climbed from 270 to 300, of whom 61 were in critical condition.
The fighters were trained in camps in Syria, Iraq and possibly the former Soviet bloc, according to the report.
In response to the fallout from the attacks, European Union interior ministers will meet to discuss a coordinated approach to combating terrorism.
The attacks have increased pressures on European officials to strengthen anti-terrorism measures in the 28-country bloc, not an easy task as the region deals with an influx of refugees fleeing mainly from civil war in Syria.
The city’s subway system partially reopened, although rush-hour crowds were thinner than usual and soldiers were checking passengers’ bags.
“I don’t know what to do”, he supposedly wrote.
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US President Barack Obama urged nations to unite against terrorism and said wiping out IS was his “top priority”.
