A video posted on Twitter showed a man with backpack lying on the ground as what appeared to be a bomb-disposal robot approached.
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A resident of the cordoned-off street in Schaerbeek said the area remains blocked off but heavily armed officers involved in the operation have gone.
A spokesman for the Islamic extremists said: “Fighters opened fire inside Zaventem Airport, before several of them detonated their explosive belts, as a martyrdom bomber detonated his explosive belt in the Maalbeek Metro station”.
The federal prosecutor’s office said the arrest in Schaerbeek was one of three in Brussels on Friday linked to the arrest in Paris the previous day of an Islamist convicted in Belgium past year, also suspected of plotting a new attack.
Najim Laachraoui’s DNA was found in a Brussels apartment raided last week.
“We can and we will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of not only our own people but people all over the world”, he said. Investigators said Laachraoui was an accomplice of Salah Abdeslam, 26, a suspect in the Paris attacks who was captured last week.
Police recovered an ISIS flag, a Kalashnikov, detonators, and ammunition at the safehouse, suggesting that Belkaid and Abdeslam’s team were planning gun and bomb attacks in Brussels like the same network had carried out in Paris.
The developments came as French police thwarted what interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve described as an “advanced terrorist plot”, following the arrest of a man in the Paris suburb of Argenteuil on Thursday night.
This was despite some analysts suspecting that Abdeslam may have meant to take part in Tuesday’s attacks in Brussels.
On Wednesday, DH reported a mix-up by a Brussels taxi dispatcher which saw a small auto sent to pick up the bombers instead of the minivan they had ordered forcing the alleged attackers to leave one bag, containing explosives, behind.
Kerry landed at the still-closed Brussels airport for a brief, hastily scheduled stop from Moscow, where he said the attacks underscored the urgency of unity in the fight against the Islamic State group.
This marks the first major admission from a Belgian official that the government made any mistakes that could have led to the terror attacks. The attacks killed 31 people and wounded hundreds more. Elsewhere, Belgium’s nuclear agency said it has withdrawn the entry badges of some staff and denied access to other people recently amid concern the nuclear plants could be a target. It is not clear whether that man was killed in the attack.
A senior Belgian nuclear industry official was secretly filmed by jihadists late a year ago, according to the country’s nuclear authority.
Abdeslam was apprehended in the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek following a shootout with police on March 18.
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Belgian law enforcement confirmed that suspected suicide bombers Khalid and Ibrahim El Bakraoui were killed in the attacks.
