Amid bomb fears, Toulouse airport briefly evacuated

Officials evacuated the Toulouse–Blagnac Airport in southern France on Wednesday morning after a suspicious package was found the day after two bombs killed 14 people at a Belgium airport.

Authorities carried out a “safety inspection” after the package was discovered in the airport terminal, AFP reported.

The main airport building was evacuated twice during the early morning for a brief period of time.

A police spokesman said only that “we are conducting a safety inspection” but did not elaborate.

France, along with the rest of Europe, was on high alert after two suicide bombers blew themselves up on Tuesday in the departure terminal of Brussels airport, killing 14 people and injuring dozens of others. Shortly afterwards another bomb exploded at a Maalbeek metro station in Brussels killing 20 more people.

The Islamic State terror group claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Police have identified the airport bombers as brothers Khalid and Ibrahim El-Bakraoui.

A manhunt is on for a third suspect seen with the men in the airport lounge shortly before the attacks. Local media reported that the third suspect, who is still at large, was Najim Laachraoui who was already being sought in connection with a series of bombings and shootings in Paris last November which killed 130 people.

The brothers, both from the Brussels Forest neighborhood, were reportedly known to police but only in connection to organized crime and not acts of terror.

Police had been searching for the two since a raid on their apartment on March 15 turned up detonators and fingerprints belonging to Salah Abdeslam, wanted as a suspected terrorist involved in the November 13 Paris attacks.

In 2012 Mohamed Merah, a self-described Al-Qaeda sympathizer who had traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan, shot dead three Jewish schoolchildren, a teacher and three soldiers in Toulouse and nearby Montauban in a nine-day killing spree in Toulouse.