The Belgian federal prosecutor said on Wednesday that Laachraoui’s undetonated charge was the largest of the three brought to the airport on Tuesday.īomb maker Laachraoui is suspected of having played a “decisive role” in the Paris terror attacks, French media reported. The second airport bomber has not been identified and a third, who has not been officially named but has been identified as Laachraoui, is on the run. He is said to have lead police to their safehouse after the bombings. The taxi driver who drove the men to the airport reportedly became suspicious of them when they refused to let him help carry their luggage.

Meanwhile, Brussels (Zaventem) airport has confirmed no flights will depart on Thursday, despite earlier expectations it would reopen. Mr van Leeuw said 31 people were killed in the attacks but the figure was expected to rise as some of the 260 injured in the blasts were critically ill.įrench prime minister Manuel Valls joined Belgian prime minister Charles Michel and European Commission president Jean Claude Juncker for a minute’s silence, outside Maalbeek metro station in the city’s EU district. “Belgium ignored our warning that this person is a foreign fighter.“Įarlier, Belgium’s federal prosecutor Frederic van Leeuw said the third suspect in the Brussels attacks remains at large.

We reported the deportation to the Belgian Embassy in Ankara on July 14, 2015, but he was later set free,” Mr Erdogan said. “One of the attackers in Brussels is an individual we detained in Gaziantep in June 2015 and deported. Turkey also notified Dutch authorities, Mr Erdogan said.Ī Dutch government official said Erdogan‘s comments were “being carefully looking into,“ but that they could not yet say if El Bakraoui had been in the Netherlands.

Mr Erdogan told a news conference that Bakraoui was detained in the southern Turkish province of Gaziantep near the Syrian border and was later deported to the Netherlands. Mr Erdogan‘s office identified the man as Ibrahim El Bakraoui, one of the two brothers named by Belgium as responsible for the attacks that killed at least 31 people in Brussels on Tuesday and were claimed by the Islamic State group.īelgian officials did not respond to requests for comment. One of the attackers in the Brussels suicide bombings was deported last year from Turkey, and Belgium subsequently ignored a warning that the man was a militant, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday.

Suicide 23 minutes over brussels