BRUSSELS, March 23 (UPI) — Belgian authorities on Wednesday identified two brothers as the key suspects in the attacks on Brussels that left 31 people dead as a manhunt continues for a third suspect.
Brothers Khalid and Ibrahim el-Bakraoui have been identified by police, while a third man — seen in a black hat walking alongside the alleged accomplices in surveillance video — remains to be identified.
Speaking at a press conference, Belgian federal prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said on Wednesday that Khalid bombed the subway station while Ibrahim bombed the airport. The brothers died in the suicide bombings.
Leeuw said the three suspects arrived at the airport via taxi from the Brussels district of Schaerbeek. Authorities searched a Schaerbeek apartment, where they found a laptop that contained a note written by Ibrahim in which he said he suspected police were searching for him but he did not want to be imprisoned.
Three explosions rocked the Belgian capital on Tuesday — two at the Zaventem International Airport at about 8 a.m. that occurred 37 seconds apart and one at a nearby metro train station an hour later.
Leeuw confirmed 31 people died and 270 have been injured. Leeuw also said the third unidentified suspect who left a third bomb at the Brussels airport is still on the run. The bomb he left had the heaviest amount of explosives, but it failed to detonate and authorities neutralized it in a controlled explosion — harming none.
The three men are accused of launching a gun and bomb attack on a Brussels airport and subway station Tuesday.
The brothers were previously suspected of being involved in organized crime, though Tuesday’s attacks is the first time they have had any known association with terrorism, Belgian state-run broadcaster RTBF reported.
Earlier reports from Belgian media indicated the third suspect had been arrested Wednesday, but they withdrew that information, saying it was false. Belgian media incorrectly identified the arrested man as Najim Laachraoui.
Laachraoui was identified earlier this week and is being sought in connection to suspected Paris attacker Salah Abdeslam.
Airport surveillance video shows the el-Bakraoui brothers in black and the third man getting out of a taxi and walking through the airport, prosecutor Leeuw previously said. But the unidentified man allegedly planted an airport bomb, then left.
Belgium will observe three days of national mourning. A minute’s silence was held Wednesday at noon local time.
Police raided Khalid’s Brussels apartment last week as part of an investigation into the November attacks in Paris that left 130 people dead. The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for both attacks.
“Islamic State fighters carried out a series of bombings with explosive belts and devices on Tuesday, targeting an airport and a central metro station in the center of the Belgian capital Brussels, a country participating in the coalition against the Islamic State,” the militant Islamist group said through an affiliated news agency, The New York Times reported.
“Islamic State fighters opened fire inside the Zaventem airport, before several of them detonated their explosive belts, as a martyrdom bomber detonated his explosive belt in the Maalbeek metro station.”
The threat level in Belgium was increased to the highest degree after the attacks. Two nuclear power plants in the country were cleared of non-essential personnel for unspecified reasons.
