Brussels suicide bombers named as brothers linked to Paris suspect

Police capture Najim Laachraoui one of three men filmed on closed-circuit TV wheeling baggage carts at the airport.

A screengrab of the airport CCTV camera showing three suspects of the Brussels attacks at the airport in Zaventem on March 22, 2016 before two bombs went off killing 14 people. AFP Photo/Belgian FederShow more

Brussels // Two suicide bombers who blew themselves up in Brussels are believed to be brothers who were being sought for links with Salah Abdeslam, one of the Paris attackers.

The brothers were named as Khalid and Brahim El Bakraoui, by Belgium’s RTBF television. Khalid last week rented an apartment in Brussels under a false name where police found Abdeslam’s fingerprints after a raid.

Authorities on Wednesday identified Najim Laachraoui, 24, as the third man filmed on closed-circuit TV wheeling baggage carts at the airport, Belgian media reported.

Several media outlets which reported that he was arrested on Wednesday in the city’s Anderlecht district later said the detained person had been misidentified, and was in fact not Laachraoui.

Abdeslam, Europe’s most wanted man, was arrested 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 ISIL militants set off to carry out the November 13 Paris attacks which killed 130 people.

A police source said a man in the middle of three men seen on closed circuit television at the airport just before the twin blasts could be Brahim El Bakraoui.

Other reports Wednesday said one of the brothers, who they did not name, could have been involved in the separate attack on Tuesday on the Brussels metro station of Maalbeek, which killed about 20 people.

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 on 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 on Tuesday, is believed to have fled the scene and is now the subject of a massive manhunt.

*Agence France-Presse