Belgian police shot and wounded a man carrying an explosives-laden suitcase in the Brussels neighborhood of Schaerbeek on Friday – hours after seven suspects were rounded up in connection with the terror attacks.
The arrest was one of three made Friday that were tied to the arrest in Paris on Thursday of a jihadist convicted in Belgium last year and suspected of planning a new attack, officials said.
“I can confirm a police operation targeting a person who was intercepted by police and suffered a slight leg injury,” Schaerbeek Mayor Bernard Clerfayt told AFP.
Lyna Hadaad watched from her window across the street as cops tried to arrest the man.
“There was police everywhere, they were telling a man to lie on the ground,” Hadaad, 31, told the Wall Street Journal.
But the man grabbed a woman who was with a little girl, she said. After the girl escaped, cops opened fire and the woman also managed to flee.
A suspected bomb factory was found this week at the site of the operation, which was connected to a foiled terror plot in France, officials said.
Images from the scene show a man lying by a tram station holding a small backpack. The man, carrying a bag of explosives materials, was dragged away by police after a bomb-disposal robot cleared him.
Clerfayt said he has been linked to the attacks in Brussels.
He also was linked to the arrest of 34-year-old Frenchman Reda Kriket in Paris a day earlier — said to be in the advanced stages of planning an attack, a police source told AFP.
Kriket, who was wanted since January on suspicion of links to terrorism, was found with heavy weapons and explosives in his apartment.
Officials say Kriket has connections to Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected ringleader of the Nov. 13 Paris attacks who died in a police raid.
A Belgian official said Kriket was convicted in absentia in July along with Abaaoud and others for being part of a recruiting network for jihad in Syria.
Kriket also was linked to the tubby jihadi recruiter Khalid Zerkani, nicknamed “Papa Noel.”
See video from the scene in Brussels:
In a later raid Friday, police detained three men — one of whom recently traveled to Iraq — and were looking for explosives after evacuating a hotel in a town south of Brussels, the town’s mayor told the Telegraph.
The men were removed from the hotel in Dinant, 60 miles south of the capital, Mayor Richard Fournaux said, though it was not immediately known if the operation was related to the Brussels attacks.
The Belgian federal prosecutor’s office told Reuters that three of those detained since Thursday have been released and three were held and face possible charges.
In other fast-moving developments Friday:
- In a major blow to ISIS, US Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced that the terror group’s deputy was killed in an operation inside Syria.
Carter identified the senior jihadist as Haji Imam, the group’s finance minister also known as Abd al-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli.
The US operation was intended to capture him alive, a US official told CNN.
Helicopters loaded with special forces descended on a vehicle carrying al-Qaduli, but something happened that led them to open fire on the vehicle instead.
The official would not say what caused them to change the plan.
- Secretary of State John Kerry and Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said a number of Americans were killed.
A US official told ABC News that two Americans were killed — spouses of US personnel living in Europe at the time of the attacks. At least 12 Americans were injured.
- Investigators identified a new suspect they believe played a role in the terror attacks, Belgian newspaper De Morgen reported, naming him as 28-year-old Syrian Naim al-Hamed.
Al-Hamed also was suspected of being involved in the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris that claimed 130 lives, the paper reported.
He was on a list circulated to other European countries after Tuesday’s attacks in Brussels, along with Najim Laachraoui, Khalid and Ibrahim El Bakraoui, and Mohamed Abrini, Reuters reported.
- Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine reported that two men were nabbed in raids in Düsseldorf and Giessen. One had been deported from Turkey with one of the Brussels bombers, while the other had received text messages on the day of the attacks containing the name of another bomber and the French word “fin,” or “end,” the magazine reported.
- Six suspects were arrested in overnight raids in Brussels and the neighborhoods of Schaerbeek and Jette. A seventh was detained Friday morning in the Forest neighborhood.
One of the suspects was caught on surveillance video at the airport terminal next to Ibrahim el Bakraoui and Najim Laachraoui, who blew themselves up there, the daily De Standaard reported Friday.
Prosecutors did not confirm the arrest and it was not known if the man – seen in a white jacket and wearing a hat — was among the seven detained.
The Telegraph reported that Belgian police believe the mystery man is Mohamed Abrini, 31, one of the top suspects of the Paris attacks who traveled to the UK last year.
Belgian news outlet Sudpresse also reported that Abrini is the man in the white jacket who was seen on video running from the scene shortly before the explosions.
Kerry, who met Belgian leaders during his brief stop in Brussels, offered his condolences.
“The United States is praying and grieving with you for the loved ones of those cruelly taken from us, including Americans, and for the many who were injured in these despicable attacks,” Kerry said.
“The United States stands firmly with Belgium and with the nations of Europe in the face of this tragedy,” he said. “We — all of us representing countless nationalities — have a message for those who inspired or carried out the attacks here or in Paris, or Ankara, or Tunis, or San Bernardino, or elsewhere: We will not be intimidated. We will not be deterred. We will come back with greater resolve — with greater strength — and we will not rest until we have eliminated your nihilistic beliefs and cowardice from the face of the Earth.”
Kerry landed at the still-closed Brussels airport – one of two sites targeted in the attacks — for a brief stop from Moscow, where he said the terror strikes underscored the urgency of unity in the fight against ISIS.
The group has claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s bombings at the airport departure terminal and a downtown subway stop that killed 31 people and wounded 300.
Talking to reporters, Kerry said the reason ISIS “is resorting to actions outside the Middle East is that its fantasy of a caliphate is collapsing before their eyes; it’s territory is shrinking. Its leaders are decimated. Its revenue sources are dwindling, and its fighters are fleeing.”
Michel described Kerry’s visit a powerful message of solidarity.
“It is very important for us today to receive your support,” he said, offering condolences for the US victims and vowing to step up counter-terrorism cooperation with the US and other countries.
With reporting by Lorena Mongelli and Danika Fears