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Islamic State claims it set off deadly bombings in Brussels Islamic State claims deadly bombings in Brussels
(about 2 hours later)
BRUSSELS — Bombs exploded Tuesday at the Brussels airport and in the city’s subway, killing at least 31 people and wounding dozens, as a European capital was again locked down amid heightened security threats. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks. BRUSSELS — Islamic extremists struck Tuesday in the heart of Europe, killing at least 31 people and wounding scores of others in back-to-back bombings of the Brussels airport and subway that again laid bare the continent’s vulnerability to suicide squads.
The two airport blasts, at least one of them blamed on a suicide bomber, left behind a chaotic scene of splattered blood in the departure lounge as windows were blown out, ceilings collapsed and travelers streamed out of the smoky building. Bloodied and dazed travelers staggered from the airport after two explosions — at least one blamed on a suicide attacker and another reportedly on a suitcase bomb — tore through crowds checking in for morning flights. About 40 minutes later, another blast struck subway commuters in central Brussels near the Maelbeek station, which sits amid the European Commission headquarters.
About an hour later, another bomb exploded on a rush-hour subway train near the European Union headquarters. Terrified passengers had to evacuate through darkened tunnels to safety. Authorities released a photo taken from closed-circuit TV footage of three men pushing luggage carts, saying two of them apparently were the suicide bombers and that the third — dressed in a light-colored coat, black hat and glasses — was at large. They urged the public to contact them if they recognized him. The two men believed to be the suicide attackers apparently were wearing dark gloves on their left hands.
“What we feared has happened,” Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said. “In this time of tragedy, this black moment for our country, I appeal to everyone to remain calm but also to show solidarity.” In police raids across Brussels, authorities later found a nail-filled bomb, chemical products and an Islamic State flag in a house in the Schaerbeek neighborhood, the state prosecutors’ office said in a statement.
Belgium raised its terror alert to the highest level, diverting planes and trains and ordering people to stay where they were for most of the workday. In its claim of responsibility, the Islamic State group said its members detonated suicide vests both at the airport and in the subway, where many passengers fled to safety down dark tunnels filled with hazy smoke from the explosion in a train pulling away from the platform.
Authorities also released a photo taken from closed-circuit TV of three men pushing luggage carts, saying two of them apparently were the suicide bombers and that the third — dressed in a light-colored coat, black hat and glasses — was at large. They urged the public to contact them if they recognized him. European security officials have been bracing for a major attack for weeks and warned that IS was actively preparing to strike. The arrest Friday of Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, heightened those fears, as investigators said many more people were involved than originally thought and that some are still on the loose.
Police later conducted raids in Brussels searching for one of the suspects, and found a nail-filled bomb, chemical products and an Islamic State flag in the search of a house in the Schaerbeek neighborhood, the state prosecutors’ office said in a statement. “In this time of tragedy, this black moment for our country, I appeal to everyone to remain calm but also to show solidarity,” said Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, who announced three days of mourning in his country’s deadliest terror strike.
Airports across Europe — and in the New York area — tightened security. “Last year it was Paris. Today it is Brussels. It’s the same attacks,” said French President Francois Hollande.
“We are at war,” French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said after a crisis meeting in Paris. “We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war.” Belgium raised its terror alert to the highest level, shut the airport through Wednesday and ordered a city-wide lockdown, deploying about 500 soldiers onto Brussels’ largely empty streets to bolster police checkpoints. France and Belgium both reinforced border security.
Added French President Francois Hollande: “Terrorists struck Brussels, but it was Europe that was targeted, and it is all the world which is concerned by this.” Medical officials treating the wounded said some victims lost limbs, while others suffered burns or deep gashes from shattered glass or suspected nails packed in with explosives. Among the most seriously wounded were several children.
European security officials have been bracing for a major attack for weeks and warned that the Islamic State group was actively preparing to strike. The arrest Friday of Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, heightened those fears, as investigators said many more people were involved than originally thought and that some are still on the loose. The bombings came barely four months after suicide attackers based in Brussels’ Molenbeek district slaughtered 130 people at Paris nightspots, and intelligence agencies had warned for months a follow-up strike was inevitable. Those fears increased following Abdeslam’s arrest in Molenbeek, along with police admissions that others suspected of links to the Paris attacks were at large.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the Brussels attacks, saying in a post on the group’s Amaq news agency that its extremists opened fire in the airport and “several of them” detonated suicide belts. It said another suicide attacker struck in the subway. The post claimed the attack was in response to Belgium’s support of the international coalition arrayed against the group. A high-level Belgian judicial official said a connection by Abdeslam to Tuesday’s attacks is “a lead to pursue.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing.
Authorities found and neutralized a third bomb at the airport once the chaos after the two initial blasts had eased, said Florence Muls, a spokeswoman for the airport told The Associated Press. Bomb squads also detonated suspicious objects found in at least two locations elsewhere in the capital, but neither contained explosives, authorities said. Abdeslam has told investigators he was planning to “restart something” from Brussels, said Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders. He said Sunday that authorities took the claim seriously because “we found a lot of weapons, heavy weapons in the first investigations and we have seen a new network of people around him in Brussels.”
Michel said there was no immediate evidence linking the attacks with Abdeslam. After his arrest, Abdeslam told authorities he had created a new network and was planning new attacks. While they knew that some kind of extremist act was being prepared in Europe, they were surprised by the size of Tuesday’s attacks, said Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon.
U.S. President Barack Obama pledged to “do whatever is necessary” to help Belgian authorities seek justice. “It was always possible that more attacks could happen, but we never could have imagined something of this scale,” he said.
“We stand in solidarity with them in condemning these outrageous attacks against innocent people,” Obama said in Havana, where he was closing a three-day visit. Officials at the airport in the Brussels suburb of Zaventem said police had discovered a Kalashnikov assault rifle and an explosives-packed vest abandoned at the facility, offering one potential lead for forensic evidence. Bomb disposal experts safely dismantled that explosive device.
Western Europe has lived for decades under the threat of violence from homegrown nationalist and revolutionary movements. Extremists from North Africa and the Middle East have attacked civilian targets without warning, ranging from France’s 1960s war in Algeria through Libya’s 1988 downing of an airline over Scotland to the 2004-05 attacks on the public transportation systems of London and Madrid. Shockwaves from the attacks crossed the Atlantic, where city and airport officials at several U.S. cities increased security force deployments and raised security levels. A U.S. administration official said American intelligence officers were working with European counterparts to try to identify the apparently skilled bomb-maker or makers involved in the Brussels attacks and to identify any links to bombs used in Paris.
Certain neighborhoods in Brussels, like the Molenbeek quarter, have bred extremists and supplied foreign fighters. Plotters linked to the Paris attacks and others have either moved through or lived in parts of the city. The official, who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly on the investigations and demanded anonymity, told The Associated Press that at least one of the bombs at the airport was suspected to have been packed into a suitcase left in the departures hall.
Tuesday’s explosions at the airport in the Brussels suburb of Zaventem came shortly after 8 a.m., one of its busiest periods when thousands of people were inside. Belgian Health Minister Maggie de Block said 11 people were killed and 81 wounded. Eleven people had serious injuries, Marc Decramer of the Gasthuisberg hospital in Leuven told broadcaster VTM. The nails apparently came from one of the bombs. Three intelligence officials in Iraq told the AP that they had warned European colleagues last month of IS plans to attack airports and trains, although Belgium wasn’t specified as a likely target. The officials, who monitor activities in the IS stronghold of Raqqa, said Brussels may have become a target because of the arrest of Abdeslam.
Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, told BFM television that the second, louder explosion brought down ceilings and ruptured pipes, mixing water with victims’ blood. One of the officials — all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about their knowledge of IS operations — said Iraqi intelligence officials believe that three other IS activists remain at large in Brussels and are plotting other suicide-bomb attacks.
“It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed,” he said. “There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere.” European leaders already struggling to cope with a wave of migration from the war-torn Middle East said they must rely on better anti-terrorist intelligence work to identify an enemy that wears no uniform and seeks the softest of targets. They emphasized that Europe must remain tolerant to Muslims as they seek to identify the Islamic State needles in that ever-growing haystack.
“We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene,” he said. Leaders of the 28-nation bloc said in a joint statement that Tuesday’s assault on Brussels “only strengthens our resolve to defend European values and tolerance from the attacks of the intolerant.”
Video from moments after the blasts showed travelers huddled next to check-in counters and lying near luggage and trolleys as dust and the cries of the wounded filled the air. Dazed people stumbled from the scene, some with clothes and shoes blown off. The United Nations’ lead official for Middle East refugees, Amin Awad, warned that Europe faced an increasing risk of racist retaliation against Muslim immigrant communities. “Any sort of hostilities because of the Brussels attack or Paris attack is misplaced,” Awad said.
Anthony Deloos, an airport worker for Swissport, which handles check-in and baggage services, said the first explosion took place near the counters where customers pay for overweight bags. He and a colleague said the second blast hit near a Starbucks cafe. Reflecting the trauma of the moment, Belgian officials offered uncertain casualty totals at both the airport and subway, where police conducted controlled explosions on suspicious abandoned packages that ultimately were found to contain no explosives.
“I jumped into a luggage chute to be safe,” Deloos said. Belgium’s health minister, Maggie de Block, said 11 people were killed and 81 injured at the airport, where thousands of passengers were waiting to check luggage and collect boarding cards.
The subway bombing came after 9 a.m., killing 20 people and wounding more than 100, Mayor Yvan Majeur said. Video posted on social media showed people cowering on the ground in the wake of the blasts, the air acrid with smoke, windows of shops and the terminal entrance shattered, and fallen ceiling tiles littering the blood-streaked floor.
“The metro was leaving Maelbeek station for Schuman when there was a really loud explosion,” said Alexandre Brans, 32, wiping blood from his face. “It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the metro.” Some witnesses described hearing two distinct blasts, with shouts apparently in Arabic from at least one attacker before the second, bigger explosion.
Near the entrance to the station, rescue workers set up a makeshift medical treatment center in a pub. Dazed and shocked morning commuters streamed from the metro entrances as police tried to set up a security cordon. Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the airport blasts, told BFM television that pipes ruptured, sending a cascade of water mixing with victims’ blood.
The airport was ordered closed for the rest of the day and CEO Arnaud Feist said the facility would be shut at least through Wednesday. About 600 flights in or out of Brussels were diverted or canceled, Muls said. “It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed. There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere,” he said. “We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene.”
The metro also was ordered closed as the city was locked down. By the end of the workday, city officials said residents could begin moving around on the streets of the capital and train stations were reopening. But Peter Mertens of the Belgian crisis center said the threat of more attacks “is still real and serious.” Marc Noel was about to board a Delta flight to Atlanta. The Belgian native, who lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, said the first blast happened about 50 yards (meters) from him. “People were crying, shouting, children. ... It was a horrible experience,” he said.
At least one and possibly two Kalashnikovs were found in the departure lounge at the airport, according to a European security official in contact with a Belgian police official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the ongoing investigation. It was not immediately clear if the firearms were used in the attacks. A random decision to pause in a shop to buy a magazine may have saved his life. Otherwise, he said, “I would probably have been in that place when the bomb went off.”
Travelers fled the airport as quickly as they could. In video shown on France’s i-Tele television, men, women and children dashed from the terminal in different directions. Security officers patrolled a hall with blown-out paneling and ceiling panels covering the floor. Anthony Deloos, an airport worker for Swissport, which handles check-in and baggage services, said the first blast took place near the Swissport counters where customers pay for overweight bags. He and a colleague said the second blast struck near a Starbucks cafe.
Marc Noel, 63, was about to board a Delta flight to Atlanta, to return to his home in Raleigh, North Carolina. A Belgian native, Noel said he was in an airport shop buying automotive magazines when the first blast struck about 50 yards away. Deloos said a colleague shouted at him to run as the blast sent clouds of shredded paper billowing through the air, and “I jumped into a luggage chute to be safe.”
“People were crying, shouting — children. It was a horrible experience,” he said, adding that his decision to shop might have saved his life. “I would probably have been in that place when the bomb went off.” Brussels Mayor Yvan Mayeur said 20 people died and more than 100 were wounded in the subway blast. Rescue workers set up makeshift first aid centers in a nearby pub and hotel.
Passengers on other trains said many commuters were reading about the airport attacks on their smartphones when they heard the subway blast. Hundreds fled from stopped trains down tunnel tracks to adjacent stations. Many told stories of having missed the bomb by minutes or seconds.
“It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the metro,” said commuter Alexandre Brans, wiping blood from his face.
Political leaders and others around the world expressed their shock at the attacks.
“We will do whatever is necessary to support our friend and ally Belgium in bringing to justice those who are responsible,” U.S. President Barack Obama said.
Belgium’s king and queen said they were “devastated” by the violence, describing the attacks as “odious and cowardly.”
After nightfall, Europe’s best-known monuments — the Eiffel Tower, the Brandenburg Gate and the Trevi Fountain — were illuminated with Belgium’s national colors in a show of solidarity.
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Associated Press Writers Raf Casert, Raphael Satter and Angela Charlton in Brussels, Lori Hinnant in Paris and Paisley Dodds in London contributed to this report. Associated Press writers Lorne Cook, John-Thor Dahlburg and Angela Charlton in Brussels, Lori Hinnant and Elaine Ganley in Paris, Jill Lawless in London, Jon Gambrell in Dubai, Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad, Bradley Klapper in Washington and Shawn Pogatchnik in Dublin contributed to this report.
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.