Belgian prosecutors said six people tied to this week’s terror attacks on the Brussels airport and subway system have been arrested.
Residents of the Schaerbeek neighborhood, where police earlier found a huge stash of explosives and bomb-making material in an apartment used by the Brussels attackers, said they heard several detonations during the raids Thursday evening.
Earlier in the day, a Frenchman was arrested in the “advanced stages” of a plot to attack France, the country’s interior minister said. Bernard Cazeneuve said there were no links “at this stage” between the plan and the attacks in Paris or Brussels.
It was also revealed Thursday that the terrorist brothers who blew themselves up in Brussels were on U.S. watch lists.
Both Khalid El Bakraoui, 27, and Ibrahim El Bakraoui, 29, were on U.S. government counterterrorism lists prior to the arrest of suspected Paris attacker Salah Abdeslam last week, the sources told Reuters.
Belgian prosecutors say Ibrahim was one of two men who detonated suicide bombs at Brussels Airport. A third attacker there is still at large.
Khalid detonated a bomb at Brussels’ Maelbeek metro station, near European Union headquarters.
A fifth terrorist involved in the metro attack could also be at large, Belgian news outlets reported — though prosecutors declined to comment.
Tuesday’s attacks killed 31 people and wounded 270.
The U.S. was not the only country aware of the risk posed by the Bakraouis. Turkish officials criticized Belgium for failing to heed a warning it issued after capturing Ibrahim near the Syrian border.
“We caught him, we prevented him from crossing into Syria, we deported him and we warned Belgium and the Netherlands about him,” said Omer Celik, spokesman for Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s Justice and Development Party.
At least three terrorists committed suicide attacks in the Brussels bombings, which left more than 30 people dead. An unidentified suspect (third man on the right) seen in the airport is still on the run.
The family of the other suicide bomber at the airport, Najim Laachraoui, 24, said they too had warned Belgian authorities about his radicalization.
The ISIS bombmaker’s brother, Mourad Laachraoui, said Najim left for Syria in 2013 and only phoned home once to tell them he was “gone.”
Despite the family’s efforts to alert law enforcement, Mourad said they never heard from police until after the Paris attacks.
“All the family are very sorry for the victims,” Mourad said.
Meanwhile, suspected Paris attacker Abdeslam, 26, who previously said he would fight extradition to France, now is eager to be transferred there. His attorney, Sven Mary, said Thursday the suspected militant — who remained on the run for four months after the Paris massacre that killed 130 — wants to get back to France “as soon as possible” because he “wants to explain himself.”
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