Three more arrested in Brussels police operation over attacks

Belgian police arrested three more people on March 25 as investigations into March 23's suicide bombings by Islamist militants in Brussels threw up more links to killings in Paris last year.

The federal prosecutor's office said the operation was connected to the arrest in Paris on Thursday of an Islamist convicted in Belgium last year and suspected of plotting a new attack.

Nine people in total have been arrested since March 24 in Belgium and two in Germany, as European authorities swoop on Islamic State militants they link both to the Brussels bombings that killed 31 people and to the attacks in Paris last November that killed 130.

Ahead of one of the arrests, heavily armed police and troops with trucks cordoned off an area around a major intersection in the northern Brussels borough of Schaerbeek. Three blasts could be heard, which the local mayor Bernard Clerfayt said were controlled explosions.

Belgian public broadcaster RTBF quoted Clerfayt as saying the suspect had been detained after being wounded and that he was linked to March 23's suicide bombings in Brussels.


It initially said he had been found to be in possession of a suitcase full of explosives but later news reports did not confirm that explosives were found.

Witnesses said police appeared to shoot the man in the leg at a tram stop and that he appeared to have his daughter with him.

Video showed the man lying on his side, shattered glass from the tram shelter smashed by bullets at his feet.

Islamic State suicide bombers hit Brussels airport and a metro train on Tuesday in the worst such assaults in Belgian history. Investigators believe they were carried out by the same cell behind November's gun and bomb attacks in Paris.

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