Suspect hunted over Brussels airport carnage still on loose

The subject of a massive manhunt identified by police as an accomplice in the deadly bombing attack on Brussels airport Tuesday was still at large Wednesday morning, after reports that he had been arrested by Belgian media were withdrawn.

Belgian’s federal prosecutor said Najim Laachraoui, 24, seen entering the Brussels airport with the two bombers before the attack, was still on the run.

Earlier reports had indicated that he was arrested during a raid in the neighborhood of Anderlicht. It was not clear if the suspect who was arrested as related to Tuesday’s attacks.

The prosecutor said Khalid El Bakraoui had carried out a bombing in the Maalbeek Metro station 40 minutes after the airport blast, and his brother Ibrahim blew himself up at the airport.

 

 

Another man thought to be involved in the airport bombing, initially identified in Belgian media as Khalid El-Bakraoui, was unidentified, the prosecutor said.

He confirmed that the attacks killed 31 people and wounded 270 more.

Laachraoui had been wanted as a suspected terrorist involved in the November 13 Paris attacks that killed 130, linking the Paris and Brussels assaults.

He is believed to have fled the scene when his suitcase bomb did not explode. The prosecutor said his bomb had been the largest of the three.

In a picture distributed by Belgium officials, the man thought to be Laachraoui can be seen on the right.

Laachraoui is believed to have made the suicide vests used in the November 13 Paris attacks, a French police official told The Associated Press, adding that Laachraoui’s DNA was found on all of the vests as well as in a Brussels apartment where they were made, which was raided by Belgian police on March 15.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation.

According to media reports Wednesday, the raided apartment had belonged to the El-Bakraoui brothers.

During the raid, a jihadi previously unknown to authorities, Mohamed Belkaid, was killed in a shootout with police while two people, now thought to have been the El-Bakraoui brothers, fled.

Last week, Belgian police said they were hunting Laachraoui as a suspected accomplice to Saleh Abdeslam, who himself was arrested Friday in the Brussels neighborhood where he grew up, a rough place with links to several of the attackers who targeted a Paris stadium, rock concert and cafes on November 13. Those attacks killed 130 people and terrified Europe.

Federal prosecutors say Laacharaoiu had traveled to Hungary with Abdeslam before the November 13 carnage, and had been traced to safe houses under a false name.

He was checked by guards at the Austria-Hungary border on September 9 while driving in a Mercedes with Abdeslam and one other person, Belgium’s federal prosecutors said in a statement.

Laachraoui, whose nationality wasn’t disclosed, had traveled to Syria in February 2013, prosecutors said. It wasn’t clear when he returned to Europe.

Using a false identity, Laachraoui also rented a house under the name of Soufiane Kayal in the Belgian town of Auvelais that was allegedly used as a safe house, where prosecutors said traces of his DNA were found.

A Belgian official working on the investigation told the AP that it is a “plausible hypothesis” that Abdeslam, who had been on the run for four months, was part of the cell linked to the Brussels attack. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss an ongoing investigation.

French and Belgian authorities have said in recent days that the network behind the Paris attacks was much larger than initially thought — and developments this week suggest the same group could have staged both the Paris and Brussels attacks.

Belgium’s justice minister said Wednesday that the country will remain at its highest terrorism threat level until further notice. That level means there’s a threat of an “imminent” attack.

Pictures Wednesday showed bodies being carried out of the Maalbeek subway station, which was targeted with a bomb about 40 minutes after the airport attack a day earlier.

The airport and several Brussels metro stations remained closed Wednesday. Security forces stood guard around the neighborhood housing the headquarters of European Union institutions, as nervous Brussels residents began returning to school and work under a misty rain.

As befits an international city like Brussels, the foreign minister said the dead collectively held at least 40 nationalities.

“It’s a war that terrorism has declared not only on France and on Europe, but on the world,” French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Wednesday on Europe-1 radio. Valls, who planned to visit Brussels later Wednesday, urged tougher controls of the EU’s external borders.

“We must be able to face the extension of radical Islamism … that spreads in some of our neighborhoods and perverts our youth,” he said. The Paris attackers were mainly French and Belgian citizens of North African descent, some from neighborhoods that struggle with discrimination, unemployment and alienation.

In its claim of responsibility, the Islamic State group said its members detonated suicide vests both at the airport and in the subway, where many passengers fled to safety down dark tunnels filled with hazy smoke from the explosion. IS warned of further attacks, issuing a statement promising “dark days” for countries taking part in the anti-IS coalition.

Before naming Khalid and Ibrahim El-Bakraoui as suspects, Belgian police issued an appeal Wednesday morning for information about the attackers.

https://twitter.com/police_temoin/status/712428268838916096?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

The police posted several tweets with the caption “Terrorism: who knows this man?” showing close-ups from closed circuit television of the man named as Laachraoui.

The Islamic State terrorist group claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attacks saying they were carried out against Belgium for its participation in the US-led coalition fighting the group in Iraq and Syria and threatening “dark days ahead” for other member countries of the coalition.