Brussels - He says the second suicide bomber, on the left in the picture, is not yet identified.
Published: Wed 23 Mar 2016, 11:54 AM
Last updated: Wed 23 Mar 2016, 11:52 PM
The Belgian prosecutor says two suspects in the bombings at the Brussels airport have still not yet been identified - one of them is a dead suicide bomber and the other is still on the loose
Prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw, speaking about a surveillance photo showing three airport suspects, outlined what is known about them at a news conference Wednesday
Van Leeuw says the culprit in the middle, one of the two suicide bombers, was Ibrahim El Bakraoui, a 29-year-old Belgian born in Brussels. He said he was identified based on a fingerprint
He says the second suicide bomber, on the left in the picture, is not yet identified.
The third suspect, who wore a pale coat and a dark hat in the right side of the picture, is also not yet identified and is being sought by police.
That suspect took flight and left behind a big bag at the airport before the two explosions. Van Leeuw says that bag turned out to have the heaviest load of explosives of all and blew up later when the bomb squad was there due to the instability of the explosives. Van Leeuw says fortunately no one was injured.
3:30pm
Belgian media which earlier reported the arrest on Wednesday of a prime suspect in Tuesday's bomb attacks in Brussels said the person detained was not, in fact, Najim Laachraoui.
La Libre Belgique newspaper said another person had been arrested. DH, which first reported the story, also said the man detained in the Anderlecht district had been misidentified.
Police and prosecutors have been declining all comment but will hold a news conference at noon GMT.
2.00pm
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 refused immediate comment after several local media reported that Najim Laachraoui, 25, believed to be the man seen on CCTV pushing a baggage trolley alongside the bombers and then running out of the airport terminal, had been captured in the Brussels borough of Anderlecht.
One of the suspects seen on CCTV pushing baggage trolleys at Brussels airport just before the explosions was named as Brahim El Bakraoui, public broadcaster RTBF reported. It said his brother, Khalid, blew himself up on the metro train.
Both had criminal records.
Laachraoui was wanted in connection with the Paris attacks. His DNA was found on almost all of the explosives belts used in those attacks and at a Brussels hideout used last week by prime Paris suspect Salah Abdeslam, who was arrested last Friday after a shoot-out with police.
RTBF said Khalid El Bakraoui 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. He is also believed to have rented a safe house in the southern Belgian city of Charleroi used to mount last November's Paris attacks.
Two suicide bombers who blew themselves up in Brussels are believed to be brothers who were being sought for links with Salah Abdeslam, the prime suspect in the Paris attacks, RTBF television reported on Wednesday, citing police sources.
RTBF named the two as Khalid and Ibrahim El Bakraoui, saying Khalid last week rented an apartment in Brussels under a false name where police found Abdeslam's fingerprints after a raid.
Police arrested Abdeslam, Europe's most wanted man, in a dramatic operation in Brussels on Friday that had been hailed as a "victory" in Belgium's campaign against terrorism.
Khalid is also linked to renting an apartment in the southern Belgian city of Charleroi from where Abdeslam and the other Brussels-based Daesh militants set off to carry out the November 13 Paris attacks which left 130 people dead.
A police source told AFP on Tuesday that a man in the middle of three men seen on closed circuit television at the airport just before the twin blasts could be Ibrahim El Bakraoui.
Other reports on Wednesday said one of the brothers, who they did not name, could have been involved in the separate attack Tuesday on the Brussels metro station of Maalbeek, which left about 20 dead.
AFP
Belgian police earlier on Wednesday issued an appeal for information about the two men believed to have blown themselves up at the airport.
The police posted several tweets with the caption "Terrorism: who knows this man?", showing CCTV close-ups of two men pushing trolleys with suitcases through the airport departure hall.
They gave three slightly different images for each of the two men who the federal prosecutor said Tuesday had likely blown themselves up in the attack.
A third man, dressed in a light coloured jacket and wearing a dark hat, who was shown with the two others in a CCTV grab issued Tuesday, is believed to have fled the scene and is now the subject of a massive manhunt.
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