Confirming the police raid, Schaerbeek’s Mayor Bernard Clerfayt told AFP, “I can confirm a police operation targeting a person who was intercepted by police and suffered a slight leg injury”.
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Belgium’s state broadcaster RTBF said one person who was detained had been was carrying a bag of explosive material.
Veterinarian Marie-Pierre Bouvez told The Associated Press that the heavily armed officers wearing hoods who were involved in Friday’s raids left around 3:30 p.m. after launching an operation about two hours earlier that started with “two big explosions”.
Mr Clerfayt said all blasts were controlled explosions carried out as a precaution by specialist bomb squads, who were seen operating a robot in the area.
Two of the three – Tawfik A and the man detained in Schaerbeek – were wounded in the leg, the statement said.
Abaaoud was from the Brussels immigrant district of Molenbeek, which has been thrust into the spotlight for its ties to the Paris attackers and Islamic radicalism.
Seven suspects were arrested in Brussels, six in the Schaerbeek and Jette districts and one in the Forest district.
However, police are still looking for the man captured by a security camera at Brussels airport along with the two suicide bombers. Interior Minister Jan Jambon offered to resign after acknowledging missed opportunities to stop one of the suicide bombers, Ibrahim El Bakraoui. These arrests are believed linked to the arrest of Reda Kriket in France on Thursday.
US Secretary of State John Kerry, during a visit to Brussels, said that the Islamic State (IS) militant group, that claimed responsibility for the Brussels attacks, would be destroyed.
French officials say a man arrested by intelligence agents in a Paris suburb has connections to the suspected ringleader of the Paris attacks.
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.
The brothers were already in US terrorism databases at the time of the attacks, officials said.
(Vatican Radio) Authorities in Belgium say six people have been detained as part of the investigation into Tuesday’s suicide bombings in Brussels that killed at least 31 people and injured some 270 others.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said in a televised address that Kriket’s arrest helped “foil a plot in France that was at an advanced stage”.
Standing alongside Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, he expressed condolences for the victims and solidarity with Belgium, declaring “Je suis Bruxellois”.
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Immediately after Tuesday’s attacks on the Brussels airport and subway, security was boosted around Belgium’s nuclear sites and hundreds of staff were sent home. Bakraoui’s brother, Khalid, struck at Maelbeek metro station, where 20 people died.
