Brussels: Islamic State launches attacks on airport and station – as it happened

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23 Mar 201600.53 EDT

Closing summary: what we know so far

Claire Phipps

• The latest official death toll stands at 31. Up to 230 people are reported to have been injured.
  
• Two blasts took place at Zaventem airport, to the north-east of the city centre, at around 8am local time; at least 11 people died here and up to 100 were injured.
• A third bomb went off at Maelbeek metro station on the rue de la Loi, close to the European Union headquarters, around an hour later. Twenty people died in this attack and 130 were injured.
• Adelma Tapia Ruiz was the first victim of the attacks to be named. The 37-year-old Peruvian woman was killed at the airport, where she was reported to be catching a flight with her Belgian husband, Christophe Delcambe, and their twin four-year-old daughters Maureen and Alondra, who survived.
• A wounded Jet Airways crew member pictured in the immediate aftermath of the explosion in her torn and bloodied yellow uniform has been named as Nidhi Chaphekar.

• Two of the suspected attackers were captured on CCTV dressed in black and wearing black gloves on their left hands thought to have concealed detonators. Federal prosecutor Frederic van Leeuw said the two men “very likely committed a suicide attack”.
• Belgian police launched a series of raids in a massive manhunt for a third man, who is thought to have escaped following the attacks without detonating his own suitcase bomb.
• The identities of the men are not known and police issued photographs asking the public to help name them.

View image in fullscreen

• An explosive device containing nails, “chemical products” and an Isis flag were discovered in a raid in Schaarbeek, a northern suburb of Brussels.
• Islamic State claimed responsibility for the terror attacks, saying its operatives had carried out “a series of bombings with explosive belts and devices”. A later statement promised further attacks, saying “what is coming is worse and more bitter”.
• The Belgian prime minister, Charles Michel, described it as a “black day” for Belgium, saying: “What we feared has happened.” He said Belgium would have three days of national mourning.
• The League of Imams in Belgium condemned “firmly the criminal and unspeakable acts … which took the lives of tens of our citizens and injured countless others”.
• Vigils have taken place across Belgium and around the world, including at Brussels’ Place de la Bourse.

View image in fullscreen

• Brussels Airport will remain closed on Wednesday, and the metro will be running a reduced service. But schools are expected to open as normal following Tuesday’s city lockdown.
• The US state department has issued a fresh warning to Americans in Europe advising them to be vigilant in public places or when using public transport, and to avoid crowded places.
• Belgium has asked EU ministers to meet to discuss the attacks; this could take place on Thursday morning.

23 Mar 201600.30 EDT

Australian PM: Europe's security 'allowed to slip'

Michael Safi

The Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has criticised European security arrangements, arguing they were allowed to “slip” before Tuesday’s attacks in Belgium.

Turnbull had been asked whether an terrorist act similar to that in Brussels could occur in Australia.

He told the ABC:

You cannot guarantee that there will be no terrorist incident.

But I can assure Australians that our security system, our border protection, our domestic security arrangements are much stronger than they are in Europe, where regrettably they allowed security to slip.

Turnbull said vulnerabilities in European security were “not unrelated to the problems they’ve been having in recent times”.

The federal opposition leader, Labor’s Bill Shorten, said it was too soon after the attacks for “the prime minister [to] be telling the Belgians what they did wrong”:

For me, today, is about recognising that people have lost their lives – innocent people have lost their lives.

No doubt the hard questions will be asked in coming days.

Australia’s official threat level currently indicates a terrorist attack is “probable”.

The Jet Airways crew member pictured on many of those front pages has been named in multiple media reports as Nidhi Chaphekar.

Australia’s Nine News said a spokesperson for Jet Airways had confirmed that Chaphekar – pictured in the immediate aftermath of the explosion in her torn and bloodied yellow uniform – was receiving treatment in hospital:

She was waiting to board a flight from Brussels to Newark at 10.15am local time. She is a cabin crew member.

We don’t have full information on the extent of her injuries. We know her location: she is in hospital and receiving medical care.

Chaphekar’s colleague Amit Motwani was also wounded in the attack but the injuries are not thought to be serious.

Newspaper front pages around the world are, unsurprisingly, dominated by the attacks on Brussels. You can see several of them here:

Dozens of Belgian expatriates have gathered in Union Square in Manhattan, bringing flowers, candles and flags to express solidarity with the victims and survivors of the attacks.

“It’s important to be here,” Renaud Vanlangendonck, a former teacher carrying his five-month-old daughter, told AFP. “We saw it in New York, Paris, Istanbul … and now it’s our country, it’s horrible.”

There was a visible police presence in Union Square as law enforcement bolstered security across America’s largest city.

The FBI and New York police were dispatching detectives as early as Tuesday night to investigate the Brussels attacks.

A number of US citizens, including three Mormon missionaries, are among the wounded.

We have more information from Peru’s foreign ministry about Adelma Tapia Ruiz, the first victim of the attacks to be named.

Tapia Ruiz, 37, was killed in the bombings at the Brussels airport.

Fernando Tapia, her brother, told Peruvian radio station RPP that his sister was at the airport with her Belgian husband, Christophe Delcambe, and their twin four-year-old daughters Maureen and Alondra, who also have Belgian nationality.

Earlier reports suggested one of the daughters was injured in the attack.

Tapia said his sister was catching a flight to New York, where she planned to meet their sisters.

The image of an injured woman in torn yellow clothes has featured prominently in coverage of the airport attacks, including the Guardian’s Wednesday front page, see below.

She has been identified as a crew member of India-based Jet Airways, Press Association reports. She has not been named.

The photograph, which shows her face covered in blood and dust and her yellow steward’s uniform shredded, emerged in the immediate aftermath of the attacks.

The airline confirmed that the victim was one of its staff in a tweet thanking well-wishers for their support.

The Jet Airways official account quoted a tweet from Indian actress Gul Panag – whose husband Rishi Attari is a pilot for the airline – who said: “It’s sad how insensitive media & SM is being, in broadcasting jetairways’ s injured crew member’s photo. Respect her privacy please!!!”

The airline confirmed that two of its staff were injured in the explosions and were receiving hospital treatment.

The photograph, which was posted on Twitter, featured on multiple newspaper front pages on Wednesday. Journalist Ketevan Kardava, a special correspondent for the Georgian Public Broadcaster based in Brussels, took the photo after being caught up in the attacks.

Adelma Marina Tapia Ruiz, who was from Peru and had lived in Brussels for six years, died during the attacks, the first victim to have been named so far, AFP reports.

The Peruvian foreign ministry has confirmed her identity.

“They took away everything she wanted to do with her life,” her brother, Fernando Tapia, told local media.

One of her daughters was wounded by flying debris.

Two Colombians and an Ecuadoran national also were among the wounded, their governments said.

[Note: this post has been edited to clarify that Fernando Tapia is the victim’s brother.]

Brazilian-Belgian man Sebastian Bellin suffered severe leg injuries while standing in line at a check-in counter at Zaventem airport.

The college basketball player, who reportedly played for the Belgian national team and for Oakland University in Michigan, was hit by shrapnel in the leg and hip and was left bleeding on the floor of the airport for an hour, according to his father.

View image in fullscreen

Jean Bellin told CNN:

My son is doing well, considering. He went through his first operation today. Because he was left for about an hour on the floor in the airport in Brussels he lost a lot of blood. So they stabilised him and now he is going to go through another operation.

I spoke with him twice. He is obviously stunned. The first words out of his mouth were: ‘You wouldn’t believe the carnage I saw around.’

He was very clear and articulate even though he was obviously in a lot of pain. The second time I spoke to him he was obviously sedated and feeling a lot more tired.

All I know is that force of the blast where he was was sufficient to throw him 6ft [1.8m] up in to the air and he landed back and he got shrapnel in his left leg and his right hip.

Very quickly there were photos of him circulating in the Belgium press and, because we have a huge network of friends in Belgium, they reached out and sent a picture of him on the floor and asked: is that really Seb?

And that was four in the morning. California time. That is how we found out.

23 Mar 201621.58 EDT

What we know so far

Claire Phipps

• At least 31 people are known to have died in a series of explosions in Brussels on Tuesday morning.
  
• The first two blasts were at Zaventem airport, to the north-east of the city centre, at around 8am local time; at least 11 people died here and up to 100 were injured.
• A third went off at Maelbeek metro station on the rue de la Loi, close to the European Union headquarters. Twenty people died in this attack and 130 were injured.
• Two of the suspected attackers were captured on CCTV dressed in black and wearing black gloves on their left hands thought to have concealed detonators. Federal prosecutor Frederic van Leeuw said the two men “very likely committed a suicide attack”.

View image in fullscreen

• Belgian police launched a series of raids in a massive manhunt for a third man, who is thought to have escaped following the attacks without detonating his own suitcase bomb.
• The identities of the men are not known and police issued photographs asking the public to help name them.

View image in fullscreen

• An explosive device containing nails, “chemical products” and an Isis flag were discovered in a raid in Schaarbeek, a northern suburb of Brussels.
• Islamic State claimed responsibility for the terror attacks, saying its operatives had carried out “a series of bombings with explosive belts and devices”. A later statement promised further attacks, saying “what is coming is worse and more bitter”.
• But it was still “too early to make a direct connection between the attacks in Paris and today’s attacks”, Van Leeuw said.
• The Belgian prime minister, Charles Michel, described it as a “black day” for Belgium, saying: “What we feared has happened.” He said Belgium would have three days of national mourning.
• The League of Imams in Belgium condemned “firmly the criminal and unspeakable acts … which took the lives of tens of our citizens and injured countless others”.
• Vigils have taken place across Belgium and around the world, including at Brussels’ Place de la Bourse.

View image in fullscreen

• Brussels Airport will remain closed on Wednesday, and the metro will be running a reduced service. But schools are expected to open as normal following Tuesday’s city lockdown.
• The US state department has issued a fresh warning to Americans in Europe advising them to be vigilant in public places or when using public transport, and to avoid crowded places.
• Belgium has asked EU ministers to meet to discuss the attacks; this could take place on Thursday morning.

Across Europe on Tuesday evening, the colours of the Belgian flag – black, yellow and red – have been projected on to national landmarks in a show of solidarity.

The image below shows a selection of these (from top left): the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, the Eiffel tower in Paris, the town council building in Belgrade, the Trevi fountain in Rome, the Royal Palace at Dam Square in Amsterdam and Rome’s Campidoglio.

View image in fullscreen

Islamic State has issued an updated communiqué taking credit for the Brussels attacks and threatening other countries in the anti-Isis coalition, Associated Press reports.

The statement promises “dark days” for countries allied against Isis, threatening that “what is coming is worse and more bitter”.

The communiqué was published in Arabic and French, and an English translation was provide by the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadi websites.

23 Mar 201621.05 EDT

Angelique Chrisafis

Although no link between the attacks on Paris in November and Tuesday’s assault on Brussels has been officially confirmed, investigators will of course be looking for potential links in the planning and execution of the two.

Angelique Chrisafis reports on four suspects still being sought in connection with the Paris terror attacks:

Several key suspects in the Paris attacks are still on the run despite an international manhunt.

Najim Laachraoui, 24, whose nationality has not been given, was identified this week as a key suspect previously known by his alias, Soufiane Kayal. He is reported to have travelled to Syria in 2013 and was travelling with Salah Abdeslam under his alias in September 2015 when their Mercedes was stopped at the Hungarian border with Austria.

Laachraoui’s DNA had been found at an apartment used by the attackers in Auvelais, near the central Belgian city of Namur, which he had rented under a false name. Traces were also found at another suspected hideout in Schaerbeek, a district of Brussels.

Also still being hunted by police is Mohamed Abrini, 31, a Belgian of Moroccan origin, who was described on his international arrest warrant four months ago as “dangerous and probably armed”. He is a childhood friend of Abdeslam — their families used to be next-door neighbours in Molenbeek. He disappeared after allegedly playing a key part in the planning and logistics of the attacks.

Two other brothers, Khalid and Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, are also being hunted, suspected of hiring properties as hideouts for the Paris terrorist team.

Police in Belgium have also released more images of the two men they say blew themselves up at Zaventem airport – who are, as yet, unidentified:

Belgian police have issued these further images of the man they believe fled the airport after his bomb failed to detonate, asking: “Do you recognise this man?”

The US state department has issued a fresh warning to Americans in Europe following the bombings in Brussels. It said:

Terrorist groups continue to plan near-term attacks throughout Europe, targeting sporting events, tourist sites, restaurants and transportation.

In wide-ranging advice, it urged US citizens to be vigilant when in public places or using mass transportation, to avoid crowded places and to use extra caution during religious holidays and at large festivals and events.

Its advice for US citizens currently in Brussels itself is here.