Manhunt on for Brussels bombers
In this image provided by the Belgian Federal Police in Brussels on Tuesday, March 22, 2016 of three men who are suspected of taking part in the attacks at Belgium’s Zaventem Airport. The man at right is still being sought by the police and two others in the photo that the police issued were according to a the Belgian Prosecutors ‘probably’ suicide bombers. Bombs exploded at the Brussels airport and one of the city’s metro stations Tuesday, killing and wounding scores of people, as a European capital was again locked down amid heightened security threats. (Belgian Federal Police via AP)
BRUSSELS—A third man filmed with two suicide bombers at a Brussels airport who fled the scene without detonating his device remains on the run, the federal prosecutor said on Wednesday.
“The third man is on the run; he left his bag with the biggest bomb in it, which exploded later, because it was so unstable, Frederic Van Leeuw said, referring to the man in a hat and white coat seen on closed-circuit television (CCTV) at the Brussels airport before the blasts.
“This third person remains unidentified and is still being looked for,” he said, adding that another man—seen in black on the left of the footage—was also unknown.
Belgian media also withdrew earlier reports that a man arrested in the capital was Brussels attacks suspect Najim Laachraoui.
“Arrested man in Anderlect is not Najim Laachraoui,” the Derniere Heure newspaper tweeted, while the RTL broadcaster said the “suspect in Anderlecht was not Najim Laachraoui in the end.”
Belgium pressed a huge manhunt on Wednesday after Islamic State (IS) bombers attacked the Brussels airport and a metro train station on Tuesday, killing around 35 people and wounding hundreds.
Police and prosecutors refused immediate comments after several media reported the arrest Laachraoui, believed to be the man seen on CCTV pushing a baggage trolley alongside the bombers and then running out of the airport terminal.
The death toll could rise further because some of the bomb victims at Maelbeek metro station were blown to pieces and victims are hard to identify.
Brothers
One of the suspects seen on CCTV pushing baggage trolleys at the Brussels airport just before the explosions was named as Brahim El Bakraoui, public broadcaster RTBF reported. It said his brother, Khalid, blew himself up on the metro train.
Both had criminal records but had not previously been linked by investigators to Islamist militants.
Laachraoui was wanted in connection with the Paris attacks.
His DNA was found on almost all of the explosives belts used in those attacks and at a Brussels hideout used last week by prime Paris suspect Salah Abdeslam, who was arrested last Friday after a shoot-out with police.
RTBF said Khalid El Bakraoui had rented under a false name the apartment in the city’s Forest borough, where police hunting Abdeslam killed a gunman in a raid last week.
He is also believed to have rented a safe house in the southern Belgian city of Charleroi used to mount last November’s Paris attacks.
The Syrian-based IS claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attacks, four days after Abdeslam’s arrest in Brussels, warning of “black days” for those fighting it in Syria and Iraq.
Belgian warplanes have joined the coalition in the Middle East, but Brussels has long been a center of Islamist militancy.
Security review
The attacks sent shock waves across Europe and around the world, with authorities racing to review security at airports and on public transport, and rekindled debate about European security cooperation and police methods.
Prime Minister Charles Michel canceled a trip to China and convened his inner cabinet to discuss security. Belgium was to observe a nationwide minute’s silence at noon on Wednesday, with King Philippe, the premier and leaders of European Union institutions attending an outdoor memorial event in Brussels’ European district.
The Brussels blasts fueled political debate across the globe about how to combat militants.
“We can and we will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world,” said US President Barack Obama.
Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination to succeed Obama in November’s US election, suggested suspects could be tortured to avert such attacks.
Police searched an apartment in the northern Brussels borough of Schaerbeek late on Tuesday, finding another bomb, an IS flag and bomb-making chemicals.
Local media said authorities had followed a tip from a taxi driver who might have driven the bombers to the airport.
An unused explosive device was later found at the airport and a man wearing a light-colored jacket and a hat, believed to be Laachraoui, was seen running away from the terminal after the explosions.
Closing in
Security experts believed the blasts, which killed about
20 people on a metro train running through the area that houses European Union institutions, were probably in preparation before Friday’s arrest of locally based French national Abdeslam, 26, whom prosecutors accuse of a key role in the Nov. 13 Paris attacks.
He was caught and has been speaking to investigators after a shoot-out at an apartment in the south of the city a week ago, after which another IS flag and explosives were found.
It was unclear whether he had knowledge of the new attack or whether accomplices may have feared police were closing in.
IS said in a statement that “caliphate soldiers, strapped with suicide vests and carrying explosive devices and machine guns” struck Zaventem airport and Maelbeek metro station.
It was not clear, however, that the attackers used vests.
The suspects were photographed pushing bags on trolleys, and witnesses said many of the airport dead and wounded were hit mostly in the legs, possibly indicating blasts at floor level.
The two men in dark clothes wore gloves on their left hands only. One security expert speculated they might have concealed detonators. The man in the hat was not wearing gloves.
About 300 Belgians are estimated to have fought with Islamists in Syria, making the country of 11 million the leading European exporter of foreign fighters and a focus of concern in France and other neighbors over its security capabilities. Reports from the wires
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