Body found in Brussels airport, bringing death toll to 32

State Department says it’s unaware of any US citizens killed in IS-claimed attacks, but some Americans remain unaccounted for

By ToI Staff and Agencies 23 March 2016, 6:17 pm

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A Belgian soldier controls an access to Brussels airport in Zaventem on March 23, 2016. (AFP / JOHN THYS)

Belgian authorities have recovered another body at the Brussels airport, raising the death toll in the Tuesday terror attacks to 32, according to local media reports Wednesday.

The reports said that during the investigation at the scene, a wall collapsed, perhaps revealing the previously obscured body.

Some death tolls counted as many as 34 killed in the twin suicide bombings at the airport and metro on Tuesday. The discrepancy could not be immediately accounted for.

The Obama administration said Wednesday it’s unaware of any Americans killed in the Brussels attacks.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said about a dozen US citizens are known to be injured. A number of other Americans remain unaccounted for.

Toner said it’s unclear if any Americans might be among the dead as Belgium has not released the nationalities of those killed. Toner said the United States is still doing its own, post-attack accounting and making every effort to support the welfare of embassy staff and US citizens in the city.

People walk away from Brussels airport after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels, Belgium, March 22, 2016. (AP/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)

Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders told Belgian television RTBF that there were around 40 nationalities were among the dead and wounded.

They included citizens of Britain, Colombia, Ecuador, France, Portugal and the United States, as well as three to four staff from the EU’s executive arm, the European Commission.

The broad range of nationalities reflects the cosmopolitan nature of Brussels — home to many migrants to Belgium as well as the institutional capital of the 28-nation European Union.

Among the first fatalities to be named was a Peruvian woman, Adelma Marina Tapia Ruiz, who had been living in Belgium for six years and was travelling with her journalist husband and young twin daughters.

One of their daughters was wounded by flying debris in one of two blasts at Brussels’ Zaventem airport.

A woman cries as people gather in front of the Bourse of Brussels on March 22, 2016 in tribute to the victims of Brussels following triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. (AFP / BELGA / Aurore Belot)

“They took away everything she wanted to do with her life,” her brother Fernando Tapia told Peruvian media, after she was identified by the foreign ministry in Lima.

A Moroccan woman was also killed in a third blast at a metro train at a station close to the European Union’s institutional hub, according to the Moroccan news agency MAP.

According to an ongoing toll provided by the Belgian health ministry, 31 people were killed and 270 were injured.

It was the bloodiest terror assault in Belgium’s history.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls on Wednesday said 10 French nationals had been injured, four of them seriously.

In London, Downing Street said one British national was missing and four were injured, three of whom were being treated in hospital.

Officers from the Belgian federal police’s disaster victim identification team were working at the sites of both attacks, poring over the remains in a grisly process to identify the casualties.