“Belgian police arrested six people in the Brussels suburb of Schaerbeek on Thursday as the manhunt for suspects in Brussels+Airport%2C+Metro+Stations%2C+Causing+Lockdown” Tuesday’s terrorist attacks targeting Zaventem airport and Maelbeek metro station continues.
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There is no word yet on the identities of the suspects or their possible connection to the attacks.
TEMPO.CO, Brussels-Belgian police arrested seven people and Germany arrested two in investigations into Islamic State suicide bombings in Brussels, while authorities in France said they thwarted a militant plot there “that was at an advanced stage”.
Belgium’s interior minister, Jan Jambon, and Belgian Justice Minister Koen Geens both offered to resign after the attacks over the security lapses that may have allowed the attackers to plan and carry out their attacks undetected.
Notable among the questions is those raised by Turkey’s announcement that it had warned Belgium previous year that one of the Brussels attackers had been flagged as a “foreign terrorist fighter”.
The younger brother of suspected Brussels suicide bomber Najim Laachraoui said overnight he is sad and overwhelmed over what his sibling had done.
One had received phone messages with the name of the metro station bomber and the word “fin” – French for “end” – three minutes before the metro blast, it said.
Kerry, traveling back to Washington after talks in Moscow, stopped in Belgium to demonstrate solidarity after the attacks, which killed 31 people and injured hundreds of others.
Adelma Marina Tapia Ruiz, a 37-year-old Peruvian woman, was killed by the airport bomb but her two young daughters and husband survived because the twin girls had run off and the father was chasing after them.
The Belgian officials have rejected Turkish allegations of inaction following Ibrahim el-Bakraoui’s deportation last July, saying the foreigners suspected of fighting in Syria can not be detained without evidence.
Prosecutors did not immediately respond to the reports.
Françoise Schepmans, the mayor of Molenbeek – the Brussels district where Abdeslam was arrested that is known as a hotbed for jihadists – told CNN there was “no collaboration” between the local and federal police forces in Belgium.
Standing next to Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, Mr Kerry said: “We will not be intimidated”.
Prosecutors said that tge arrests were linked to a raid in Paris on Thursday, where an attack was allegedly foiled.
China has also announced that one of its citizens was killed in the attacks. He was Europe’s most wanted fugitive before being captured in the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek near his childhood home.
“We will not be deterred”, he said.
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“We – all of us representing countless nationalities – have a message for those who inspired or carried out the attacks here or in Paris, or Ankara, or Tunis, or San Bernardino, or elsewhere: We will not be intimidated”.
