Belgian police hunt for 2 bombers as questions grow over security
Print Edition
POLICE in Brussels yesterday launched a desperate hunt for two men suspected of taking part in the Islamic State bombings that struck at the very heart of Europe.
Under-fire Belgian security officials are tracking one man identified at the scene of a suicide attack on the metro, as well as a suspected bomber seen on CCTV footage at Brussels airport.
European security authorities faced mounting pressure after it emerged that the two brothers who blew themselves up at the airport and on a metro train were known to police and that one of them had been deported from Turkey sometime last year as a “foreign terrorist fighter.”
A senior Turkish official confirmed it was Ibrahim El Bakraoui.
“Despite our warnings that this person was a foreign terrorist fighter, the Belgian authorities could not identify a link to terrorism,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.
However, Belgium’s Justice Minister Koen Geens denied that the 29-year-old Belgian citizen had been flagged as a possible terrorist.
“At that time, he was not known here for terrorism,” Geens told VRT television. “He was a common law criminal out on parole.”
On Wednesday, prosecutors said brothers Ibrahim, 29, and Khalid El Bakraoui, 27, had carried out attacks at Zaventem airport and Maalbeek station, while police sources named bomb-maker Najim Laachraoui as a second airport bomber.
Police have launched a massive manhunt for the third airport suspect, seen wearing a hat and white jacket on CCTV footage from Zaventem’s departure hall. His explosive-packed luggage failed to go off.
It has emerged that the three men identified have links to the Paris attacks.
Belgian prosecutors confirmed yesterday that they had issued an international arrest warrant in December for Khalid El Bakraoui because he was wanted in connection with the Paris outrage.
They said he was previously suspected of using a false identity to rent a property in the Belgian city of Charleroi, which was used as a safe house by members of the Islamist cell that caused carnage in Paris.
Belgian police searched the property on December 9 and issued an international arrest warrant for Bakraoui on December 11. His details and photo appear on a list of wanted people on the website of Interpol.
Meanwhile, Belgian newspaper DH said the taxi driver who drove the Brussels suicide bombers to the airport was not allowed to touch their bags and mostly sat in silence.
A man wearing a hat and light-colored jacket did chat with him, talking about his anger toward the United States.
Flags in Brussels hung at half-mast yesterday as Belgium mourned the 31 people from all over the world killed in Tuesday’s attacks, while doctors battled to save scores more injured in the carnage.
Candles, Belgian flags and teddy bears were piling up in the central Place de la Bourse with tributes left to the innocent victims of the attacks.
Outside the bombed metro station of Maalbeek, a banner read “Why?” in English, French and German.
Hundreds of airport staff and their families carried candles and flowers in a silent march and vigil near the shattered terminal that will stay closed until tomorrow.
“We are all one big family. The whole world is with us and we see that we can count on one another but I am very sad, very sad to see such a thing happen,” said one staff member.
The latest bombings, four months after Islamic State jihadists killed 130 people in a series of attacks in Paris, have raised fears of further strikes in Europe, which is battling to deal with homegrown extremists.
The continent is already fighting crises on several fronts, from its worst refugee crisis since World War II to the possibility of Britain leaving the bloc, and leaders have vowed to combat terrorism “with all means necessary.”
EU justice and interior ministers were to convene later yesterday in Brussels for an emergency meeting to work out a plan to address the threat to posed by jihadists and the application of anti-terrorism laws across the bloc.
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