© Reuters Amid unconfirmed reports that extremists may initially have been planning an attack on a nuclear site in Belgium but decided to change targets after police raids in Brussels last week. Police in Brussels have made six arrests following Tuesday’s twin airport and metro suicide bombings after two Belgian government ministers offered to resign amid mounting criticism of the country’s failure
to foil the attacks.
With prosecutors releasing more evidence that the attacks were carried out by the same Islamic State network responsible for November’s carnage in Paris and two suspects still believed to be on the run, the state broadcaster, RTBF, said several police raids were carried out across Brussels on Thursday evening.
The operation involving Swat teams and armoured cars with helicopter support began soon after 9pm, the broadcaster said, citing police sources as saying it targeted “people suspected of taking part in the attacks” that killed at least 31 people and injured 300. Prosecutors confirmed six unidentified people were arrested, including three in a car.
Amid unconfirmed reports that extremists may initially have been planning an attack on a nuclear site in Belgium but decided to change targets after police raids in Brussels last week, Belgium’s interior and justice ministers on Thursday conceded errors had been made and offered to stand down.
The DH newspaper cited police sources as saying the two el-Bakraoui brothers, who blew themselves up Zaventem airport and the Maelbeek metro station, had filmed 10 hours of video of the daily routine of the head of Belgium’s nuclear research and development programme using a concealed camera. Police have confirmed the existence of the footage, but not who shot it.
Other reports suggested an attack may have been planned for Easter Monday. The high-security inner areas of a nuclear power station would almost certainly have been beyond the reach of militants such as the brothers, security experts told Belgian media. But 140 soldiers were dispatched to guard the country’s three nuclear sites earlier this month and after the bombings on Tuesday the sites were sealed and non-essential staff evacuated as a precaution.
Turkey has accused Belgium of ignoring warnings about Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, one of the two suicide bombers who detonated suitcase bombs at Zaventem airport killing themselves and 11 other people, saying he was twice deported from Turkey last year and flagged as a suspected foreign jihadist.
Prosecutors also confirmed on Thursday that Ibrahim’s brother Khalid, who exploded the bomb that killed 20 more people at Maelbeek metro station, had rented a flat used as a hideout for the Paris attackers and was named in an international arrest issued on 11 December.
A fourth attacker, caught on CCTV cameras with the two airport bombers, is still being sought and a fifth suspect, thought to have been involved in the metro attack, could be dead or alive.
Belgian officials have rejected Turkish allegations of inaction following Ibrahim el-Bakraoui’s deportation last July, saying foreigners suspected of fighting in Syria cannot be detained without evidence they have committed a crime. Bakraoui was on parole after serving half of a 10-year sentence for armed robbery.
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Belgium Was Warned About Bomber
Jambon said the prime minister, Charles Michel, had refused to accept his resignation with the words: “In time of war, you cannot leave the field.” The justice minister, Koen Geens, also offered to go.But the interior minister, Jan Jambon, admitted there had been “errors at Justice and with the Belgian liaison officer in Turkey,” adding that “if you put everything in a row, you can ask yourself major questions” about the government’s handling of the Islamist threat.
In further evidence of connections between the Brussels and Paris attacks, police sources have said they believe the second dead suicide bomber at the airport was Najim Laachraoui, 24, a veteran Belgian Islamic State fighter and bombmaker whose DNA was found on two of the explosive belts used in Paris.
The third man caught on airport security cameras, wearing a cream jacket and pushing a baggage trolley into the departures hall alongside Laachraoui and Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, is now the subject of a manhunt. The federal prosecutor, Frédéric van Leeuw, has said the man fled the airport leaving behind a third suitcase bomb.
French and Belgian media have said a man carrying a large bag was seen on CCTV in Khalid’s company just before the explosion: the possible fifth attacker. It is not clear whether the man, pictured in a computer-generated image with hollow cheeks and a small goatee beard, was killed in the blast or escaped.
EU justice and interior ministers were holding an emergency meeting on Thursday in the wake of the attacks, and the French president, François Hollande, said France would “speak loud and clear” for better intelligence sharing between EU member states and tougher measures against weapons trafficking.
Laachraoui travelled to Hungary with him last year, while the Bakraoui brothers rented – as well as the Belgian safe house used by the Paris killers – an apartment in the Schaerbeek district of Brussels where Abdeslam himself hid for three weeks after the attacks.All the Brussels attackers so far identified by police and prosecutors have links to Salah Abdeslam, the sole survivor of the 10 jihadis who killed 130 people in Paris last November.
Abdeslam, 26, who is suspected of buying materials, renting cars, booking rooms, scouting locations and moving people into place for the Paris attacks, appeared briefly in court on Thursday and was remanded in custody until 7 April. His lawyer, Sven Mary, said Abdeslam no longer opposed extradition to France, but “wishes to leave ... as quickly as possible” in order “to explain himself”.
Mary said Abdeslam was due in court in Brussels on 31 March to face a European arrest warrant issued by France and that his extradition could take place in a matter of weeks.
The accumulating evidence that Belgium’s police and intelligence services were aware the extremists were members of the Paris attacks cell, but unable to prevent Tuesday’s bombings, has drawn heavy international criticism and highlighted the scale of the country’s security problem.
Faced with some 300 locals who have fought in Syria, Belgium is the biggest European supplier of foreign jihadis in relation to its national population of 11 million. The country’s foreign minister, Didier Reynders, has insisted security always had to be balanced with civil rights.
But the president of the European commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, defended Belgium, telling the Flemish-language daily De Standaard: “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. There was terrorism in Britain and in Germany in the 1970s and 1980. There was terrorism in Spain, in Italy and much more recently in France. People should stop lecturing Belgium.”
Brussels airport is likely to remain closed until Saturday, with passengers diverted to Antwerp, Liege and Lille in France. Another minute’s silence was held across the country on Thursday, the second of three days of national mourning.
Michel, the prime minister, said everything was being done to determine who was responsible for the attacks, which he described as targeting the “liberty of daily life” and “the liberty upon which the European project was built.” Belgium and its people had been “hit at our heart,” he said.
Islamic State released a video on Thursday calling on its followers to wage jihad after the Brussels bombings for which it claimed responsibility on Tuesday.
“The crusaders aircrafts, including Belgium’s, continue to bomb … night and day,” the video said. “Every Muslim who is well aware of the history of Islam, knows that the holy war against infidels is an integral part of Islam.”
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