Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said the attacks, the worst in the country’s history, had killed or wounded people of around 40 nationalities, with doctors saying they were treating injuries “seen in war”.
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Police in Brussels on Thursday launched a desperate hunt for two men suspected of taking part in the Islamic State bombings that struck at the very heart of Europe.
Jambon said: “I realized that in these conditions it was justified to offer my resignation to the premier”. “We perhaps did things we should not have done”.
A young German couple headed for a NY holiday were among the victims of the Brussels airport attack, which left the wife missing and the man in a coma, the Bild daily reported.
Three of those involved, and killed, in the Brussels attacks have been identified: ISIS bomb-maker Najim Laachraoui and Ibrahim El Bakraoui at the airport, and El Bakraoui’s brother Khalid El Bakraoui on a train near the Maelbeek metro station. It’s not clear if he was among the at least 20 killed in the blast, RTBF said.
He added: “At this stage, no tangible evidence links this project to the attacks of Paris and Brussels”. Both appeared to have been carried out by the same Belgium-based Islamic State cell.
DNA traces were also found in a rural Belgian hideout used on the eve of the Paris attacks, as well as in a suspected bomb factory in the Schaarbeek district of Brussels.
Abdeslam’s arrest last week may have affected the timing of the Brussels attack, counterterrorism officials in the USA and Europe tell Dina.
But Prime Minister Charles Michel asked Jambon and Geens to stay on, given the current challenge the government is facing.
President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that Ibrahim El Bakraoui had been deported on July 14, 2015, and that Belgium had subsequently ignored a warning that he was a militant. He was later set free by the Dutch for lack of proof of his involvement with jihadis. Sixty-one people are in intensive care.
The idea is part of a new package of anti-terrorism measures being discussed by the government that also seeks to grant intelligence services greater access to financial transactions and personal communications. “Here, though, he was not known as a terrorist”.
He also compared the world’s reaction to the killings in the Belgian capital to the pledges of solidarity the USA received after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Last month, authorities said searches after the Paris attacks uncovered video linked to a person working in Belgium’s nuclear industry. The interior ministers of several European nations got together where the idea of a “European intelligence agency” was once again floated by a top European Union official, but the proposal went nowhere.
“There’s been anywhere between 4,000 and 6,000 European citizens who have gone to Iraq or Syria to join ISIS or other extremist groups”, Bakos said, compared to the 250 or so Americans that are suspected of going or attempting to go there. But they were not linked to terrorism until last week, when a police raid turned into a gun fight at the apartment.
While the plot “did not happen” the investigation confirmed that it was the el Bakraoui brothers who “put a camera in front of the house to take the images”. The hearing has now been postponed until 7 April. Mary told reporters at the courthouse that he asked for a one-month delay on any transfer while he studies the large dossier, but that Abdeslam “wants to leave for France as quickly as possible”. He said the next extradition hearing will be March 31, and he expects the process to take about another two weeks after that.
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It comes comes after Belgium’s terror watch status was lowered from the highest to the second highest level.
