“Belgian police captured a suspect carrying what a broadcaster said was a suitcase full of explosives on March 25, after shooting him in the leg during a major police operation following March 22 suicide bombings in Brussels”, Armenpress” reports citing Reuters.
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At least four Americans in Brussels have not been seen since the attack, including Justin and Stephanie Shults, who have been living in Belgium since 2014.
Yesterday Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan revealed Ibrahim El Bakraoui, one of the brothers responsible for the attacks on Brussels Airport yesterday, was sent to the Netherlands in June previous year.
Nuclear control agency spokeswoman Nele Scheerlinck said the move at some plants “is not necessarily linked with the terrorist attacks”, noting that the decision to deny access usually takes weeks.
Belgian prosecutors said the arrests were made during raids in central Brussels, Jette and the Schaerbeek neighbourhood – where police found a large stash of explosives and other bomb-making material earlier this week in a flat believed used by the suicide bombers.
Bakraoui’s brother, Khalid, struck at Maelbeek metro station, where 20 people died. But, again, the investigation is ongoing and this is just the closest thing to a narrative that can be crafted from the limited information that has been released and reported. Ten men are believed to have directly carried out November’s terror attacks in Paris that killed 130.
Meanwhile, a terrorist attack in France was foiled as the suspected perpetrator was arrested near Paris on Thursday.
Mourad was speaking for the first time since the attacks at a press conference at his taekwondo club in Uccle, a well-off neighborhood in the south of Brussels.
US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Brussels on Friday for counter-terrorism talks with European Union and Belgian officials as a manhunt continued for one of the Brussels airport attackers who was recorded on a surveillance video and had fled the scene.
Abdeslam’s lawyer Sven Mary said Thursday his client “didn’t know” in advance about the Brussels attacks, and said he would no longer fight extradition to France. The bombings killed 31 people and wounded 270.
He said the threat goes beyond France and Belgium and that it is impossible to reduce it to zero.
Brazilian professional basketball player Sebastien Bellin said that as he lay bleeding profusely and fearing death at Brussels airport, he thought of something odd: his daughter’s tennis skills.
Authorities are not excluding the possibility that there was a second attacker at the metro station.
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He also tried to play down his links with the ringleader of the Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, saying he only met him once, in the Belgian town of Charleroi, two days before the attacks.
