UPDATES: What we know about Brussels explosions

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The border between France and Belgium has been closed and security measures have been increased at Belgian nuclear sites

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Bomb Disposal Techs Safely Detonate Another Bomb in Center of Brussels

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"Eurostar service from London to Brussels has been suspended until further notice. What we are planning to do be able to do is run a train from London to Lille, which is on the same route."

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The terrorists thought to have used three bombs for the double blast at the airport

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Explosions occurred at 2 separate metro stations

Maelbeek and Schuman metro stations both had explosions

+ Airport attack

+ Bomb that was detonated by security service

Total so far

ISIS bombs in 4 separate Brussels locations

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Guardian

UK response

British police reacted to the attacks on Brussels by boosting patrols at sites feared to be most vulnerable to terrorist attack.

UK security officials are waiting for details from their Belgian counterparts about who the attackers are, who they may be connected to, and how they may have slipped the net.

Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, the national lead for counter-terrorism policing, said: “As a precaution forces across the UK have increased policing presence at key locations, including transport hubs, to protect the public and provide reassurance.”
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Events in Brussels have not changed the UK threat level from Islamist terrorism, which remains at severe, meaning an attack is assessed to be highly likely.

The biggest target in Britain for terrorists is still judged to be London.

Rowley said: “In London specifically, the Metropolitan police service has mobilised additional officers, who will carry out highly visible patrols at key locations around the capital including the transport network. The number of officers deployed will be regularly assessed. These additional officers are deployed as part of reassurance measures.”

Police forces are providing the extra patrols and visible presence from their existing resources.

A special national police unit, the National Police Coordination Centre (NPoCC) was “fully operational” and would find extra officers from around Britain, for example from county forces in mainly rural areas, to rush to sites in London and other big cities if even further patrols were judged necessary.

The extra patrols provide deterrence for any would-be attackers or even the carrying out of hostile reconnaissance, as well as reassurance to the public to continue their business as normal.

Police across the UK will be awaiting any instructions or decisions from the meeting on Tuesday morning of Cobra, the government crisis committee. All flights between the UK and the main airport in Brussels have been cancelled for the rest of Tuesday.

The UK threat level assessment is made by the joint terrorism assessment centre, which sits within MI5. It was raised in 2014 after an Islamic State fatwa ordering its followers to attack western targets.

Rowley said: “The threat to the UK from international terrorism remains at severe – as it has been since August 2014, meaning an attack is highly likely.”

British counter-terrorism officials will be scouring intelligence for any connections to Brussels-based jihadis and awaiting any fresh information from their Belgian counterparts.

The London mayor, Boris Johnson, told Sky News: “We are stepping up a presence at transport hubs and major airports, but that is purely for the purpose of reassurance and does not reflect any intelligence we have about a threat to London.”

Greater Manchester police said they had also increased patrols. Asst Ch Const John O’Hare said: “First and foremost, our thoughts are with all those who have been affected by the incidents in Brussels today.

“There is no specific threat in Greater Manchester following the events this morning but we remain at a threat level of severe.

“We are working closely with Manchester airport to ensure that the appropriate response is in place and we have increased our patrols to support this. We will continue to review the situation and maintain our increased patrols in crowded areas, iconic locations and transport hubs.

“The events today in Brussels reinforce the need for us all to remain vigilant and report any concerns whilst continuing with normal daily life.”
France deploys extra 1,600 police

France is to deploy an extra 1,600 police at its borders following the Brussels attack, the country’s interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, has announced. “It is essential to maintain a vigilance,” he said in a televised address.

Security forces in France remain at a high state of alert after last year’s terror attacks there.

The apparently coordinated explosions in Brussels on Tuesday came four days after the arrest in a Brussels shootout of the only known survivor of 10 Islamist attackers who killed 130 people in a string of suicide bombings and shootings in Paris in November.

All trains to Brussels stations from Paris have been cancelled.

Similar measures were expected in other European countries.
International reaction

The Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has tweeted that Australians are in solidarity with the people of Belgium following the attacks.

“Deeply concerned by the attacks in Brussels. Australians’ thoughts, prayers & solidarity are with the people of Belgium,” he tweeted after Tuesday’s attacks.

Australia’s foreign minister, Julie Bishop, said in a statement the Australian government condemned the atrocities. “Our thoughts and sympathies are with the people of Belgium.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/m ... els-blasts

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Mail Online

Police launch massive manhunt for suspect in a white coat as chilling airport CCTV shows 'ISIS bombers' wearing single black gloves to hide triggers for suicide vests in attacks that left 34 dead

ISIS has claimed responsibility for the massacres, which have killed 34 in total and injured close to 200 others
CCTV from Brussels airport reveals picture of three suspects and man in a hat now believed to be on the run
Anti-terror police said they had found another bomb, an ISIS flag and 'chemical products' in raids after attacks
14 people were killed and 50 more injured in two bombs at Brussels airport while 20 killed on Maelbeek Metro train
Foreign Ministry say some terrorists involved in deadly plot are 'still at large' and Britain and U.S. helping with hunt
Armed police have arrested two men in dramatic stand-off in city centre and suspect also held on Amsterdam train
Following the attack in Brussels, ISIS threatened to hit the UK 'harder and more bitter through the grace of Allah'

A major manhunt is underway for an ISIS suspect in a white coat and black hat who fled Brussels Airport after two explosions ripped through the terminal in a suicide bomb attack this morning, killing 14 people and injuring dozens of others.

Police issued a wanted notice for the man who was seen on CCTV calmly pushing a luggage trolley through the check-in area with two other suspects minutes before the blasts at about 8am (7am GMT) today.

His alleged accomplices were wearing black gloves on their left hands, which security sources say would have hidden the triggers for their explosive vests.

The two men blew themselves up while the third suspect is believed to have left a nail bomb before being spotted running from the terminal.

It is not known if the fugitive then sped to Maelbeek station to carry out the other blast that killed 20 people in a subway train just 79 minutes later.

Belgian police launched the manhunt as ISIS claimed responsibility for the massacres, which killed 34 people in total and injured close to 200 others.

As a series of anti-terror police raids were mounted across Belgium today, prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw confirmed two suicide bombers died in the attack on Brussels' main airport while a third was being 'actively' sought.

It also emerged this afternoon that police had discovered another nail bomb, a number of 'chemical products' and an ISIS flag at a house in the Schaerbeek area during a raid in connection with this morning's attacks.

Police conducted dozens of raids and swooped on a number of suspects as the Belgian Foreign Ministry said many of those behind the terror plot are 'still at large'.

At least two people in Brussels were arrested at gunpoint outside the city's North railway station, a mile from the Maelbeek subway.

A third suspect was also arrested on a train near Amsterdam, while hours later shots were reportedly fired at the Dutch capital's main train station during an arrest attempt.

A suspect package found at Gard du Nord in Paris also delayed Eurostar services this afternoon.

Another man was also taken into custody by armed police at Brussels South railway station near the suburb of Schaerbeek.

Following the attack in Brussels, ISIS threatened to hit the UK 'harder and more bitter through the grace of Allah'.

Link to Full Disturbing Article - Videos - Photos:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... nated.html

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Reuters

Belgians hunt Islamic State suspect after blasts kills more than 30

Belgian police are hunting an Islamic State suspect seen with two supposed suicide bombers shortly before they struck Brussels Airport in the first of two attacks that also hit the city's metro, killing at least 34 and wounding over 200.

The blasts on Tuesday claimed by the Syrian-based militants four days after the arrest in Brussels of a prime suspect in November's Paris attacks, sent shockwaves across Europe and around the world, with authorities racing to review security at airports and transit systems, and drawing an outpouring of solidarity.

"We can and we will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world," said U.S. President Barack Obama. Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination to succeed Obama in November's election, suggested suspects could be tortured to avert such attacks.

Brussels police mounted an operation in the north of the city, turning up another bomb, an Islamic State flag and bomb-making chemicals in an apartment in the borough of Schaerbeek.

Local media said authorities had followed a tip from a taxi driver who believed he may have driven the bombers to the airport.

Investigators said they were focussing on a man in a hat who was caught on CCTV pushing a laden baggage trolley at the airport with two others they believed were the bombers. An unused explosive device was later found at the airport and a man was seen running away from the terminal after the explosions.

Security experts believed the blasts, which killed about 20 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 Salah 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 shootout at an apartment in the south of the city a week ago, after which another Islamic State 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.

Islamic State said in a statement that "caliphate soldiers, strapped with suicide vests and carrying explosive devices and machineguns" 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.

MAN IN THE HAT

Officials said the final death tolls remained uncertain from the carnage in the morning rush hour, around 8 a.m. (0700 GMT) at the airport and shortly after 9 a.m. on the metro.

"A photograph of three male suspects was taken at Zaventem. Two of them seem to have committed suicide attacks. The third, wearing a light-coloured jacket and a hat, is actively being sought," prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw told a news conference.

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 any gloves.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/us-belgiu ... KKCN0WO0LB

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Reuters

Belgians identify two suspected bombers in Brussels blasts-RTBF

* Islamic State claims strike against "crusaders"

* Attackers believed linked to suspected Paris attacker

* Blasts occur four days after Paris suspect held in Brussels

* Reviving torture debate, Trump calls for waterboarding

By Philip Blenkinsop, Jan Strupczewski and Alastair Macdonald

March 23 (Reuters) - Belgian police identified two suspected Islamic State suicide bombers captured on security cameras before they struck Brussels Airport on Tuesday in the first of two attacks that also hit the city's metro, public broadcaster RTBF said on Wednesday.

The death toll in the attacks on the Belgian capital, home to the European Union institutions and NATO, rose to at least 31 with more than 200 wounded, Health Minister Maggie De Block said on VRT television.

The Syrian-based Islamist militant group claimed responsibility four days after the arrest in Brussels of a prime suspect in November's Paris attacks. If confirmed, the identifications would link the Brussels blasts directly to the jailed Paris suspect, Salah Abdeslam.

The attacks sent shockwaves 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.

RTBF, quoting a police source, named the suspected bombers as Khalid and Brahim El Bakraoui, two brothers resident in Brussels and known to the security services for crime.

The newspaper DH said a third suspect seen with them before running away from the airport after the blasts was identified as Najim Laachraoui, 25, a man sought by police and directly linked to Abdeslam.

Khalid 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, RTBF said.

The Brussels blasts fuelled 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 U.S. President Barack Obama.

Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination to succeed Obama in November's U.S. election, suggested suspects could be tortured to avert such attacks.

Brussels police searched a house in the north of the city late into the night, turning up another bomb, an Islamic State flag and bomb-making chemicals in an apartment in the borough of Schaerbeek.

Local media said authorities had followed a tip from a taxi driver who may have driven the bombers to the airport.

Investigators said they were focusing on a man in a hat who was caught on CCTV pushing a laden baggage trolley at the airport with two others they believed were the bombers. An unused explosive device was later found at the airport and the man, 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 EU 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 shootout at an apartment in the south of the city a week ago, after which another Islamic State 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.

Islamic State said in a statement that "caliphate soldiers, strapped with suicide vests and carrying explosive devices and machineguns" 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.

Officials said the final death tolls remained uncertain from the carnage in the morning rush hour, around 8 a.m. (0700 GMT) at the airport and shortly after 9 a.m. on the metro.

"A photograph of three male suspects was taken at Zaventem. Two of them seem to have committed suicide attacks. The third, wearing a light-coloured jacket and a hat, is actively being sought," prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw told a news conference.

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 any gloves.

"If you recognise this individual or if you have information on this attack, please contact the investigators," a police wanted notice for the third man read. "Discretion assured."

Islamic State warned 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 centre of Islamist militancy.

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 neighbours over its security capabilities.

"What we had feared has come to pass," said Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, vowing to face down the threat.

On Wednesday, he will host a prearranged visit by French Premier Manuel Valls, who declared: "We are at war."

Reviving arguments over Belgian policies following the Paris attacks, in which 130 people were killed in an operation apparently organised from Brussels, French Finance Minister Michel Sapin spoke of "naiveté" on the part of "certain leaders" in holding back from security crackdowns on Muslim communities.

Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders retorted that each country should look to its own social problems, saying that France too had rough high-rise suburbs in which militants had become radicalised.

Life began to return to normal in Brussels on Wednesday, with some public transport working and cars returning to the European district, but the metro system remained closed and the airport was still shut to travellers. (Editing by Paul Taylor and Angus MacSwan)

http://news.trust.org/item/201603230817 ... =reTheWire

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BBC News

Brussels attacks: 'Two brothers' behind Belgium bombings

Two of the men who carried out attacks in Brussels on Tuesday have been named by Belgian media as the brothers Khalid and Brahim el-Bakraoui.

The RTBF broadcaster quoted a police source as saying Brahim was a suicide bomber at Zaventem airport. Twin explosions there killed 14 people.

It said Khalid was the suicide bomber at the Maelbeek metro station, where about 20 people died.

Belgium is observing three days of national mourning.

So-called Islamic State (IS) has said it was behind the attacks and warned that more would follow.

A minute's silence for the victims will be held at midday (11:00 GMT).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35879141

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Reuters

Brussels bombing prime suspect arrested: media

A prime suspect in Tuesday's Brussels bombings, Najim Laachraoui, was arrested on Wednesday in the city's Anderlecht district, several Belgian media said.

Police and prosecutors could not be reached for comment, but federal prosecutors announced they would hold a news conference at 1200 GMT.

Police were hunting Laachraoui as being a man seen with suspected suicide bombers at Brussels airport.

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15kg of explosives, 15 liters of acetone, detonators, suitcase filled w nails found in house raided in Schaerbeek yesterday

This is just one ISIS safe house

It is highly unlikely that this house is a one off

In reality ISIS probably have many similar such safe houses all over Brussels

Possibly ISIS safe houses in Belgian cities of Antwerp, Liege & Charleroi and many other places

some frighteningly closer to YOUR own homes

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OOPS!

BIG MISTAKE SORRY

Laachraoui was NOT arrested

Belgian media have retracted reports that a key suspect in the attacks in Brussels has been arrested.

News outlets, quoting judicial sources, had named him as Najim Laachraoui, possibly seen in a CCTV image before the Zaventem airport blasts.

But media later said that a man detained in the district of Anderlecht was not Laachraoui.

Twin explosions at the airport and another at a metro station on Tuesday left about 34 dead and 250 wounded.

Two of the other attackers have been named in Belgian media as the brothers Khalid and Brahim el-Bakraoui.

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Guardian

Shabby Brussels flat belies the coordinated atrocities plotted within

The four men staying at a top-floor flat in Schaerbeek, north-west Brussels didn’t talk much to their neighbours.

The grey, five-storey corner building on a quiet street was shabby and in the process of being decorated. It had recently been sold, locals said, and housed quite a few short-term lets. The Post-it notes and layers of sticky tape used to stick new residents’ names near the buzzers suggested it was a building whose tenants changed often.

The letterboxes were all stuffed to overflowing with junk mail and supermarket coupon catalogues. In the small entrance hallway, a bare bulb poked from a broken light, there was paint dotted across the old mosaic-tiled floor and signs of decorating work going on the first floor.

Latest developments on aftermath of Tuesday’s twin attacks on airport and metro station

“I spoke to them once, there were two brothers,” said a local painter and decorator of the mysterious group of men who had spent time on the fifth floor. “I saw one of them in the lift only once – he had a beard – but he never spoke, and the others I never saw at all,” said Jairo Valderana, a Colombian who lived next door to them on the fifth floor, his front-door metres away from the men’s hideout. Valderana, who arrived in Brussels with his wife and daughters, aged 14 and 18, a month ago said he had never heard anything strange from the flat until police arrived on Tuesday night shouting at all the neighbours to put their hands up.

On Tuesday at dawn, it was from this fifth-floor flat that three men ordered a taxi to Zaventem airport. When the driver arrived to collect them, they were reportedly angry that they could not fit all their luggage in the boot and they left behind one of their five bags. On arriving at the airport departures terminal, they refused to let the taxi driver help unload the bags, which the driver found odd.

Soon afterwards, one of the men, heavily built Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, 29, who had been carrying explosive material in his bag, blew himself up at the airport terminal alongside a second as yet unidentified bomber who also died. The third man dressed in a light jacket, hat and glasses, whose luggage contained the biggest bomb, is thought to have left his bag and ran out of the terminal before the explosions. His bag later exploded, causing no casualties, as police bomb disposal teams arrived at the scene. He is still on the run.

Just over an hour later, el-Bakraoui’s younger brother, Khalid, 27, blew himself up in a suicide bomb on the Brussels metro. In total, 31 were killed and 270 injured in the worse attacks ever on the Belgian capital.

When the taxi driver later contacted police, a vast area of Schaerbeek was put under police lockdown as specialist armed teams raided the apartment at 4 Max Roos Street. Afraid they might find more gunmen or suicide bombers, officers evacuated the area shouting to locals about the risk of getting caught in gunfire.

The flat was empty but police discovered a makeshift bomb factory. In the apartment were 15kg of explosives, 150 litres of acetone, 30 litres of oxygenated water, detonators, a suitcase filled with screws and nails as well as materials, such as plastic boxes, needed to pack the explosives. Another man arrested nearby is still being questioned.

Police found in a bin a laptop that contained the elder el-Bakraoui’s will and notes, in which he had written that he was “in a rush”, and that he “didn’t know what to do”, that he felt he was being hunted and was “no longer safe”.

He feared “ending up in a cell like him”. This was interpreted by the police as a reference to Salah Abdeslam, the key suspect in November’s Paris attacks, who after four months on the run, was finally cornered by police in Brussels last week and is now in an isolation cell in Belgium’s highest-security prison.

The el-Bakraoui brothers’ suicide bombings suggest that the Brussels attacks are directly linked to the Paris attacks that killed 130 people.

The brothers’ suspected logistics role in the Paris attacks suggests that both strikes drew on the same jihadi cell. This network was made up in part of young Brussels men who had known each other for years, some with childhood or even family ties. The el-Bakraouis are the second set of brothers involved after Salah Abdeslam and his elder brother, who blew himself up in Paris. Another suspect on the run, Mohamed Abrini, had a younger brother who died in Syria aged 20, fighting with members of the same group.

The el-Bakraoui brothers had a profile that differed from several of the younger Paris attackers. Ibrahim el-Bakraoui was deported from Turkey last June with a warning that he was a militant, which the Turkish authorities have claimed Belgium ignored. It is unclear whether either brother ever arrived in Syria to fight.

What is clear is that both el-Bakraouis have the profile of hardened and reckless armed criminals who had served time in prison before becoming involved with jihadi terrorists on their home turf in Brussels.

Like Amedy Coulibaly, the Frenchman who carried out a bloody siege at a Paris kosher supermarket following the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January last year, the el-Bakraouis displayed almost suicidal behaviour in police chases following armed robberies in their youth. Also like Coulibaly, it was seemingly not until after they had served time in prison that their links to radical jihadism developed.

Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, the oldest brother, had been sentenced to nine years in 2011 for an attempted robbery of a Western Union branch in Brussels. During the robbery, when an employee had escaped into the street screaming, the police had pursued the robbers. El-Bakraoui fired on police using heavy weapons, injuring an officer in the foot before hiding out in a flat. His DNA was later also found on Kalashnikovs in a basement.

In 2012, Khalid el-Bakraoui served time in prison for a violent car-jacking. Released in 2014, he had been sought since mid-2015 for breaching parole conditions.

But it is still uncertain when or through who the brothers became radicalised.

As referenced in Ibrahim el-Bakraoui’s final note on his computer, the brothers had been hunted and on the run from police for a week since an anti-terrorist raid on a flat in the quiet Forest area of south-west Brussels last Tuesday. The younger brother had rented that flat apparently as a hideout for Paris attackers. One Paris accomplice, the Algerian Mohamed Belkaïd, was shot dead there as he prepared to fire a Kalashnikov.

Heavy weapons and an Islamic State flag were found at the Forest flat, along with Abdeslam’s fingerprints. Khalid el-Bakraoui is also known to have rented another hideout in Charleroi, southern Belgium, where the Paris ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud met suicide bombers and from where he set off to lead the November assault on the French capital.

The el-Bakraoui brothers, with their gangland connections, may also have provided weapons for the Paris attacks in which gunmen opened fire on bars and at a rock concert at the Bataclan, the Belgian state broadcaster RTBF reported.

After the bombmaking factory was found at the fifth-floor flat this week, Schaerbeek, an area of Brussels with a mix of grandiose and handsome villas and more disadvantaged, densely populated streets, has become one of the main focal points in the Brussels attacks investigation.

“It’s so quiet round here, maybe that’s why they hid here,” said a Belgian artisan butcher doors away from the hideout. Schaerbeek’s mayor, Bernard Clerfayt, warned against wrongly stigmatising the district.

Several of the Paris suspects had at some point passed through Schaerbeek. Another flat there had been rented under a false identity in September 2015, two months before the Paris attacks, where explosive material were later found along with a drawing of a person wearing a belt. A fingerprint of Abdeslam was found there along with DNA from Bilal Hadfi, who was part of the suicide bomb team at France’s national stadium during the Paris attacks. Abdeslam is believed to have remained hidden in Schaerbeek for several weeks after fleeing Paris on the night of the attacks.

The other key suspect in the Brussels airport bombing, Najim Laachraoui, 24, grew up in Schaerbeck after his family arrived from Morocco when he was a child. Laachraoui – who media have reported could be the on-the-run airport bomber pictured on CCTV in a hat and light jacket, or could have blown himself up in the airport – is believed to have been a bomb-maker and logistics planner for the Paris attack.

The el-Bakraoui brothers highlight the links between terrorism and criminal records, and the strength of family in Islamic militancy

Laachraoui is said to have made the homecrafted TATP-filled suicide vests used in the Paris attacks. A French police official told the Associated Press that Laachraoui’s DNA was found on all of the vests as well as in a Brussels apartment where they were thought to have been made. TATP was among the bomb-making materials found this week at the Schaerbeek flat linked to the Brussels attacks. Laachraoui had also been stopped, under his alias, in a Mercedes at a checkpoint with Abdeslam as they crossed from Hungary to Austria in September last year, but he was then released.

Just as Abdeslam was found hiding in Molenbeek not far from his parents’ home, the latest bomb factory was found barely a mile from where Laachraoui went to school at a red-brick Catholic secondary, La Sainte-Famille, in another area of Schaerbeek.

The headteacher, Veronica Pellegrini, said Laachraoui had been a pupil there from the age of 12 to 18 and left in 2009. “His school career was totally normal, he never had to repeat a year, there were no incidents on his school record,” she said. His brother had been a local martial arts star but his sports club said they would not talk about the family.

Before the Brussels attacks, police had been searching for Laachraoui as a suspected accomplice of Abdeslam. He was well-known to police and is believed to have travelled to Syria in 2013 and been key in a ring recruiting Belgian youths for jihad. In 2014 an international arrest warrant was issued against him.

Since December, police investigating the Paris attacks have been looking for a man under the alias of Soufiane Kayal who it recently emerged was Laachraoui. His DNA was found in two hideouts used by Paris attackers and on explosive material.

Links might prove to go back even further to what is known as the “Verviers cell”. Police killed two gunmen in a shootout in the town of Verviers near the German border just after the Charlie Hebdo and kosher grocery attacks on Paris in January 2015. Police at the time said they had foiled a jihadist plot.

Le Monde has reported that the Verviers network, which included Abdelhamid Abaaoud, had envisaged attacking an airport.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/m ... l-bakraoui

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Main Online

IS trains 400 fighters to attack Europe in wave of bloodshed

ISIS has trained more than 400 fighters to unleash more deadly terror attacks across Europe with extremists ordered to wait for the 'right time and place' to cause maximum carnage, it has emerged.

Officials believe hundreds of extremists have been trained specifically for external attacks on European cities, like the ones which have brought death and devastation to Brussels and Paris.

Depraved Islamic State chiefs are said to have encouraged fighters to choose the time, place and method of a terror attack wisely in a bid to cause maximum casualties and destruction.

Security officials, including European and Iraqi intelligence officials and a French lawmaker who follows the jihadi networks, say there are camps in Syria and Iraq designed specifically to train for attacks against the West.

Officials believe hundreds of extremists have been trained specifically by ISIS for external attacks on European cities, with extremists ordered to wait for the 'right time and place' to cause maximum carnage

The network of interlocking, agile and semiautonomous cells shows the reach of the extremist group in Europe even as it loses ground in Syria.

Before being killed in a police raid, the ringleader of the November Paris massacres claimed he had entered Europe in a multinational group of 90 fighters, who scattered 'more or less everywhere.'

But the biggest break yet in the Paris attacks investigation - the arrest on Friday of fugitive Salah Abdeslam- did not thwart the multipronged attack just four days later on the Belgian capital's airport and metro that left 31 people dead and around 270 wounded. Three suicide bombers also died.

Just as in Paris, Belgian authorities are now searching for at least one fugitive in Tuesday's attacks - this time for the 'Man in White' who was seen on airport security footage with the two suicide attackers.

The fear is that the man, whose identity Belgian officials say is not known, will find Abdeslam's path instructive.

After fleeing Paris immediately after the November attacks, Abdeslam forged a new network back in his childhood neighborhood of Molenbeek in Brussels - long known as a haven for jihadis and renewed plotting, according to Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders.

'Not only did he drop out of sight, but he did so to organise another attack, with accomplices everywhere. With suicide belts. Two attacks organized just like in Paris. And his arrest, since they knew he was going to talk, it was a response: `So what if he was arrested? We'll show you that it doesn't change a thing,'' said French Senator Nathalie Goulet, co-head of a commission tracking jihadi networks.

Depraved ISIS chiefs are said to have encouraged fighters to choose the time, place and method of a terror attack wisely in a bid to cause maximum casualties and destruction. Pictured: The Brussels airport aftermath

Fires burns among bags and debris as passengers flee the terminal at Brussels airport in the immediate aftermath of two explosions at the check-in desks yesterday morning. More European terror plots are feared

Estimates range from 400 to 600 Islamic State fighters trained specifically for external attacks, according to the officials, including Goulet. Some 5,000 Europeans have gone to Syria.

'The reality is that if we knew exactly how many there were, it wouldn't be happening,' she said.

Two of the suicide bombers in yesterday's Brussels attacks, brothers Ibrahim and Khalid El Bakraoui, had no known extremist links until an apartment one of them rented was traced to Abdeslam last week.

Similarly, an Algerian killed inside that apartment on March 15 had nothing but a petty theft record in Sweden - but he'd signed up as an Islamic State suicide bomber for the group in 2014 and returned to Europe as part of the Paris massacre plot.

In claiming responsibility, ISIS described a 'secret cell of soldiers' dispatched to Brussels for the purpose.

The shadowy cells were confirmed by Europol - the EU police agency which said in a late January report that intelligence officials believed the group had 'developed an external action command trained for special forces-style attacks.'

French speakers with links to North Africa, France and Belgium appear to be leading the units and are responsible for developing attack strategies in Europe, said a European security official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak about briefing material.

The objective appears to no longer be killing as many people as possible but rather to have as many terror operations as possible

Anti-terror security official

He is also familiar with interrogations of former fighters who have returned to Europe. Some were jailed after leaving ISIS while others were kicked out of the terror group. The fighters include Muslims and Muslim converts from all across Europe.

Fighters in the units are trained in battleground strategies, explosives, surveillance techniques and counter surveillance, the security official said.

'The difference is that in 2014, some of these IS fighters were only being given a couple weeks of training,' he said. 'Now the strategy has changed. Special units have been set up. The training is longer. And the objective appears to no longer be killing as many people as possible but rather to have as many terror operations as possible, so the enemy is forced to spend more money or more in manpower. It's more about the rhythm of terror operations now.'

Similar methods had been developed by al-Qaeda but ISIS has taken it to a new level, he said.

Another difference with these 'external operation' units is that fighters are being trained to be their own operators - not necessarily to be beholden to specific orders from the IS stronghold in Raqqa, Syria, or elsewhere.

In the case of yesterday's attacks, Abdeslam's arrest may have been a trigger for a plot that was already far along.

'This was not put together as a response to the arrest. However the timing of what has happened over the last few days has maybe hurried up the planning and execution,' said Magnus Ranstorp, a Swedish security analyst. 'I see the link to the environments either in France or in Belgium. Whether they're logistically linked ... they're probably part of the same batch of extremists that have come out of Syria.'

Jihadists are being ordered to carry out attacks at a time which will cause the maximum number of casualties and destruction. Pictured: The aftermath of the Paris massacres which saw 130 people killed last November

Several security officials have said there is growing evidence to suggest the bulk of the training is taking place in Syria, Libya and elsewhere in North Africa.

'To pull off an attack of this sophistication, you need training, planning, materials and a landscape,' said Shiraz Maher, a senior research fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation in London.

Maher has conducted extensive interviews with foreign fighters. The research centre, based at Kings College in London, has one of the largest databases of fighters and their networks.

'Even if they worked flat out, the attackers in Brussels would have needed at least four days,' Maher said.

The question for many intelligence and security officials is now turning to just how many more fighters have been trained and are ready for more attacks.

A senior Iraqi intelligence official who was not authorised to speak publicly said people from the cell that carried out the Paris attacks are scattered across Germany, Britain, Italy, Denmark and Sweden. Recently, a new group crossed in from Turkey, the official said.

The latest new name to surface this week, Najim Laachraoui, turned out to be the bombmaker who made the suicide vests used in the Paris attacks, according to French and Belgian officials.

Attackers used an explosive known as Triacetone Triperoxide, or TATP, made from common household chemicals. DNA evidence indicates he died in the suicide attack on the airport.

Fifteen kilos of TATP were found in an apartment linked to the Brussels attackers, along with other explosive material.

The unidentified man seen on security footage wearing a white jacket and black hat at the Brussels airport on Tuesday remains at large, a fugitive link in a chain still being forged.