Brussels man shot … tied to foiled Paris plot – Belgian police conduct more raids, Germany holds 2

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BRUSSELS, March 25, (Agencies): Belgian prosecutors confirmed on Friday a man shot and detained in a police operation in the Brussels district of Schaerbeek was linked to a planned attack in France, foiled by the French authorities on Thursday.

The prosecutors said in a statement they had detained three people in Brussels on Friday in relation to the French attack plot, naming them as Tawfik A., Salah A., and the third, unnamed man taken in the Schaerbeek operation. Two of the three — Tawfik A and the man detained in Schaerbeek — were wounded in the leg, the statement said. Separately, the prosecutors said they had released three of the six people they detailed on Thursday. They were still holding Faycal C., Abou A. and a third unnamed person, the statement said.

The statement said that investigators established on the basis of DNA tests that Naijm Laachraoui was one of the suicide bombers that blew himself up in the Brussels airport on Tuesday, killing at least 10 people there. Police questioned seven terror suspects in Belgium and France on Friday as US Secretary of State John Kerry declared “Je Suis Bruxellois” during a solidarity visit after bombings in Brussels claimed by the Islamic State group. Grieving Belgians were holding prayers in the rain in a central Brussels square carpeted with flowers and tributes to the 31 killed and 300 injured by the airport and metro suicide blasts on Tuesday.

The under-fire Belgian police arrested six people in raids linked to the Brussels carnage, while in France, police said they had foiled a terror strike by a man linked to the Belgian ringleader behind the November attacks on the French capital. The Belgian government faces heavy criticism over how the Brussels attackers slipped through the net, with three of them known to police and said to have links to the November Paris attacks in which 130 people died. As US officials said two Americans were among the Brussels dead, Kerry said he stood by the Belgian people, echoing their backing for the United States after the 9/11 terror attacks.

“Then, voices across Europe declared, ‘Je suis Americain.’ Now, we declare, ‘Je suis Bruxellois’ and ‘Ik ben Brussel,’ Kerry said in French and Flemish, the country’s two main languages, after meeting Belgian Premier Charles Michel. The phrasing recalled former US president John F. Kennedy’s famous “I am a Berliner” speech at the height of the Cold War, as well as the “Je suis Charlie” outpouring of solidarity after last year’s attacks on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

In the stunned city, home to the European Union and NATO, mourners returned Friday to the Place de la Bourse square where they stood silently under umbrellas, some in tears and others still in shock. Their grief mixed with growing anger about the apparent failure of the Belgian authorities to stop the bombers before they struck. “The government knows a lot but they do nothing. Why didn’t they do something to stop this attack? I think the government is a bit to blame for this situation,” said Sergio Jorge de Oliveira Silva Lima, 38, a Portuguese citizen who has lived in Belgium for 15 years.

Meanwhile, police conducted more raids in a Brussels suburb Friday in an operation the mayor said was linked to both the airport and subway bombings that killed 31 people earlier this week and to the arrest of a man in the Paris suburbs who may have been plotting a separate attack in France. Belgium’s state broadcaster said one person carrying a bag of explosive material was wounded and arrested in the raid in Schaerbeek.

A manhunt has been underway since Tuesday for one of the Brussels airport attackers who was recorded on a surveillance video and fled the scene. Prosecutors have not said how many attackers there were in total, or how many accomplices might be at large. Belgian prosecutors said raids Thursday night targeted central Brussels, Jette and the Schaerbeek neighborhood, where police had earlier found a huge stash of explosives and bomb-making material in an apartment used by the Brussels attackers. Belgian police arrested seven people and Germany arrested two in investigations into Islamic State suicide bombings in Brussels, while authorities in France said they thwarted a militant plot there “that was at an advanced stage”.

Islamic State suicide bombers hit Brussels airport and a metro train on Tuesday, killing at least 31 people and wounding some 270 in the worst such attack in Belgian history. Investigators believe the attacks were carried out by the same Islamic State cell responsible for gun and bomb attacks that killed 130 people in Paris in November. The Belgian federal prosecutor’s office said six people were held during searches in the Brussels neighbourhoods of Schaerbeek in the north and Jette in the west, as well as in the centre of the Belgian capital. Public broadcaster RTBF said a seventh man was arrested in the Forest borough of Brussels early on Friday.

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