Two Americans among dead in Brussels attacks, U.S. official says
At least two Americans were killed in the Brussels attacks that claimed at least 31 lives, a U.S. official said Friday as Secretary of State John Kerry made a somber visit to the heart of the European Union that was struck by Islamic State violence earlier this week.
Belgian authorities and the Dutch Embassy positively identified the remains of Alexander and Sascha Pinczowski, two New York City siblings.
The information was issued Friday by James Cain on behalf of the Pinczowski family. Cain is the father of Alexander’s fiancee, Cameron Cain.
He says the family is “grateful to have closure on this tragic situation.”
Cain says Alexander was on the phone at the Brussels airport with his mother in Holland on Tuesday when the line went dead.
He says the siblings were Dutch nationals who had lived in the U.S.
“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 alongside Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel.
At least four Americans are known to have been missing. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said earlier this week that the U.S. Embassy was still working to account for all of its staff members in Belgium.
“We will not rest until we have eliminated your nihilistic beliefs and cowardice from the face of the Earth,” Kerry said, directing his remarks against Islamic State-connected attackers who have struck around the world.
Meanwhile, a new suspect in the attacks was identified as Naim al-Hamed, a 27-year-old Syrian man born in Hama, and described as “very dangerous, suspected of being armed,” according to a police notice first published Friday by the Belgian Derniere Heure news outlet.
Hamed was suspected of involvement in both attacks, but it was not immediately clear whether he was the elusive third attacker who authorities believe dropped a suitcase with explosives at the Brussels airport and then vanished.
French authorities said Friday that a man detained in a raid the previous night in the Paris suburb of Argenteuil is believed to have connections to Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the deceased ringleader of November’s Paris attacks that left 130 dead, the Associated Press reported, citing unnamed French officials. French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said that the man, identified in French media as 34-year-old Frenchman Reda Kriket, was “at the advanced stage” of plotting an attack on the country.
Cazeneuve said Thursday that there was no apparent link to Tuesday’s attacks in Brussels.
Belgian authorities have been scrambling to track down suspects who remain at large as officials confront accusations that they had failed to disrupt the plot that claimed dozens of lives this week.
It was not clear whether six people detained in Brussels on Thursday participated in the attacks, Belgian authorities said, nor is it known yet how many people were involved as it became clearer that the Brussels attacks had links to the November massacres in Paris.
Meanwhile, police pressed ahead with a manhunt for a suspected accomplice who is believed to have fled Tuesday’s attack at Brussels Airport.
The French newspaper Le Monde and the Belgian broadcaster RTBF reported that video monitors had captured images of another possible accomplice, who is believed to have slipped away on the Brussels subway. The report could not be immediately confirmed.
Criticism has also been leveled at the Dutch government, which on Thursday released a letter from Turkish authorities announcing their decision to deport Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, 29, to the Netherlands in July, after he was apparently detained at the Turkey-Syria border.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had said Wednesday that Turkey explicitly warned Dutch authorities that Bakraoui, who would become one of the airport suicide bombers, was “a foreign terrorist fighter.”
But the letter does not explain why Bakraoui was deported, and Dutch Justice Minister Ard van der Steur said Turkey did not explain its decision. Because Bakraoui was not on any watch lists at the time and because he had a valid Belgian passport, van der Steur said, “there was no reason to take any action.”
In a sign of the intense pressure on Belgian authorities after what are widely regarded as a host of security failures in the lead-up to Tuesday’s attacks, the country’s interior and justice ministers offered to resign Thursday, according to Belgian news media reports.
Both Interior Minister Jan Jambon and Justice Minister Koen Geens have come under criticism for their departments’ inability to disrupt the terrorist cell before it struck, despite links between the Brussels plotters and the attackers in Paris in November.
The Brussels attackers had been on authorities’ radar. Bakraoui’s brother, Khalid el-Bakraoui, 27, who is believed to have been the suicide bomber on the Brussels subway car, had even been subject to an international arrest warrant. The Belgian prosecutor’s office said Thursday that the warrant was issued Dec. 11 and that he was wanted for using a false name to rent an apartment in the Belgian city of Charleroi that was used as a hideout for the Paris attackers.
A photo, released to Turkish media Thursday, showed a police mug shot of the elder Bakraoui - smiling and unshaven, wearing a dark T-shirt - prior to his deportation to the Netherlands in July.
A variety of personal details about the bombmaker trickled out Thursday. Najim Laachraoui, hailed in an Islamic State video for devising the explosive packages that killed 31 people in Brussels, had attended Catholic school, and his younger brother has become an international taekwondo competitor.
Yet a news conference Thursday with the bombmaker’s brother and an interview with the director of the Catholic school did little to shed light on what led Laachraoui, described as a good student and “kind and intelligent” brother, down the path so many others have followed to violent extremism.
The Catholic school in the ethnically mixed Brussels neighborhood of Schaerbeek welcomed non-Catholics. “He was a good student,” recalled Veronica Pellegrini, the director of the Institut de la Sainte-Famille d’Helmet. Pellegrini said he spent six years at the school and studied humanities.
In an interview, Pellegrini said the school never asks the students what religion they observe. And she said that the school had not heard from Laachraoui since he graduated in 2009.
Laachraoui’s brother Mourad, a well-known athlete for his taekwondo skills, said that while his family was a practicing Muslim family, he did not notice any changes in his brother’s behavior.
After Najim left for Syria, Mourad said that tried to find him and get him to return. He tried using Facebook, but Najim stopped using his real name. Their parents called the police in 2013 and saw police again in December after the Paris attacks.
Mourad said he felt sorrow for the victims of the bombings. Asked about his sports career, he said: “I want to continue my sports. I am fighting. I have always been fighting and I will continue fighting.” As for his younger brothers and Syria, he said, “I am now the oldest one, and I will prevent the others from going.”
Najim Laachraoui’s DNA was found in a Brussels apartment raided last week. The discovery of a militant cell there eventually led to the arrest of Salah Abdeslam last Friday. Abdeslam is believed to have been involved in logistics for the Paris massacres, which claimed 130 lives.
More of the latest on the suicide bombings this week in Brussels (all times local):
7:20 p.m.
German official says there’s no concrete evidence that a man arrested in Duesseldorf following the Brussels attacks has current links to Islamic extremists in Brussels or Paris.
Duesseldorf prosecutors said a 28-year-old German national was arrested Thursday for theft but also is being investigated on suspicion of preparing an act of violence.
Der Spiegel magazine reported earlier Friday the man was flown to Amsterdam by Turkish authorities last summer along with one of the El Bakraoui brothers. The brothers were among Tuesday’s Brussels suicide bombers.
Frank Scheulen, a spokesman for North Rhine-Westphalia state criminal police, told n-tv television authorities are looking into indications the suspect might have Islamic extremist links. But he says “at the moment there are no concrete indications that this person has current contacts to the Islamist scene in Brussels, Paris or elsewhere.”
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7 p.m.
Belgian federal prosecutors say DNA analysis and an official investigation have confirmed that one of the suicide bombers at the Brussels Airport was Najim Laachraoui.
They say the 24-year-old is also the suspected bombmaker whose DNA was found on a suicide vest and bomb used in the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris that killed 130 people.
Thirty-one people were killed and 270 wounded in Tuesday’s bombing attacks at the Brussels airport and on a subway train in Belgium’s capital.
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6:45 p.m.
A Belgian official says the top suspect in the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, Salah Abdeslam, has stopped cooperating with police since Tuesday’s bombings at the Brussels airport and subway.
Justice Minister Koen Geens told Belgian lawmakers Friday that Abdeslam “no longer wants to talk.”
Federal prosecutors also said Friday the suspect “refused to make the slightest comment” when questioned just after the Brussels attacks. He also “exercised his right to silence” during the second of two rounds of questioning on March 19.
Abdeslam was arrested in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek on March 18, just four days before the bombings at the Brussels airport and subway killed 31 people and wounded 270 on Tuesday.
France is seeking his extradition. Abdeslam’s lawyer initially challenged that, saying his client could have valuable information for investigators, but Abdeslam has changed his mind since the Brussels attacks and is prepared to go.
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6:15 p.m.
The international police agency Interpol says it is providing Belgium with analytical and operational support to try to identify eventual links between the Brussels attacks and others attacks and attackers elsewhere.
The multi-pronged effort includes cross-checking information on suspects and analysis of how attackers around the globe operate, including the types of explosives and arms they use, Interpol said in a statement Friday. Interpol will also expand access to its database of stolen and lost documents.
“The tens of thousands of foreign fighters traveling to and from conflict zones have expanded the universe of potential threats,” Interpol Secretary General Juergen Stock was quoted in the statement as saying. “We need to ensure that … information moves faster than the terrorists.”
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5:55 p.m.
A Belgian electrician working near the scene of police raids in Brussels says he saw police shoot a suspect in the leg.
Norman Kabir tells The Associated Press that the man was sitting at a bus stop Friday in the Brussels district of Schaerbeek with a young girl. He says police took the girl into safe custody. Kabir says police asked the man “to put the bag far from him” and that’s what he did, but police shot him twice, apparently in the leg.
Belgian state broadcaster RTBF says police apparently feared there were explosives in the man’s bag.
Kabir says “I was very shocked … this part of Brussels is very quiet.”
Belgian prosecutors say three people have been detained in counterterrorism raids Friday in Brussels, and two of them were shot in the leg, including one person in Schaerbeek.
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5:45 p.m.
French President Francois Hollande says the extremist network that committed the attacks in Paris and Brussels is “in the process of being annihilated” but there are still others out there.
Sitting alongside former Israeli President Shimon Peres, Hollande spoke briefly about the Paris attacks in November and the attacks in Brussels last week.
Hollande says Friday “there’s still a threat weighing on us.”
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5:20 p.m.
Police in a German city on the Belgian border say a German woman who lived there was among the people killed in the Brussels airport bombing.
Police in Aachen said earlier this week that a couple from the city was caught up in the bombings, with the husband seriously wounded and the wife missing.
On Friday, they said in a statement citing Belgian police that the woman has now been identified as among the dead. They gave no further details, citing the need to respect relatives’ privacy.
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5:05 p.m.
A resident of one Brussels street cordoned-off in the police raid in the Schaerbeek district says she’s still unable to leave her residence.
Veterinarian Marie-Pierre Bouvez told The Associated Press that the heavily armed officers wearing hoods who were involved in Friday’s raids left around 3:30 p.m. after launching an operation about two hours earlier that started with “two big explosions.”
Bouvez says other police still have the area locked down, and shouted at her to “get back inside” when she tried to go into the street. She says there’s much confusion and residents have not been told what’s happening.
Belgian prosecutors say three people have been detained in counterterrorism raids Friday in Brussels. Two of the three detained were shot in the leg, prosecutors say, including one person in Schaerbeek.
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4:10 p.m.
Belgian prosecutors say three people have been detained in counterterrorism raids in Brussels prompted by the arrest of a Frenchman in the Paris area suspected of plotting a new attack.
The federal prosecutor’s office says the three were arrested Friday in three different districts of the Belgian capital – Schaerbeek, Forest and Saint-Gilles.
These arrests are believed linked to the arrest of Reda Kriket in France on Thursday. Kriket was convicted in absentia of terrorist activities last year along with the suspected ringleader of the deadly Nov. 13 attacks on Paris.
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4 p.m.
German prosecutors say they’re investigating whether a Moroccan man detained in central Germany has any connection to the Brussels attacks.
Prosecutors in Giessen said Friday the 28-year-old, whom they didn’t identify, was picked up early Thursday because he didn’t have valid ID. They said they found documents indicating that he had been in the Brussels area recently and seized a cellphone that they are now evaluating.
They say officials established that he had previously entered Germany under various aliases and sought asylum, and that he is known to police in Italy. Authorities have opened a criminal case over suspected residency law violations and the man remains in custody.
Der Spiegel magazine and two public broadcasters are saying the man received two suspicious text messages on the day of the Brussels attacks.
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3:45 p.m.
Belgian state broadcaster RTBF says a large police raid in Brussels is over and one person carrying a bag of explosives material has been wounded and arrested.
A resident of the cordoned-off street in the city’s Schaerbeek district, veterinary surgeon Marie-Pierre Bouvez, told The Associated Press the area remains blocked off but heavily armed officers involved in the Friday operation have gone. Police still shouted at her to stay in her office, however.
AP reporters at the scene can see explosives robots and experts still combing the area.
RTBF quoted Schaerbeek district mayor Bernard Clerfayt as saying the arrested person has been linked to the attacks in Brussels this week and an arrest in France.
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3:20 p.m.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has criticized Belgian authorities as incompetent for not taking action against a Brussels attacker who Turkey had deported back to Europe after detaining him at the border with Syria.
Turkish authorities say Ibrahim El Bakraoui, one of the suicide bombers at Brussels Airport, was caught in June in Turkey’s border province of Gaziantep and deported at his own request to the Netherlands.
They say Dutch and Belgian authorities took no action against him despite Turkish warnings that he was a “foreign terrorist fighter.”
Erodgan says in a speech in the central Turkish town of Sorgun: “We caught him at Gaziantep, we deported and sent him. Those gentlemen did not take the necessary steps against the terrorist and released him … go and explain this!”
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3:05 p.m.
The mayor of a Brussels district says a large police raid now underway is linked to the investigation into this week’s Brussels suicide bombings and a new arrest in the Paris area.
State broadcaster RTBF quoted mayor Bernard Clerfayt as saying one person has been “neutralized” in the operation Friday in his Schaerbeek district. He did not say whether that meant the person was arrested or wounded.
Clerfayt says the raid is linked to Tuesday’s attacks on the Brussels airport and subway and to the arrest of a man Thursday in the Paris area. Officials say that man had a Belgian terror conviction and connections to the suspected ringleader of last year’s deadly Nov. 13 attacks in Paris.
Prime Minister Charles Michel skipped a wreath-laying ceremony at the Brussels airport with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry because of the ongoing police operation.
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2:45 p.m.
A new blast has been heard from a police operation in a Brussels neighborhood that once housed a hideout for the suicide bombers who targeted the city’s airport and subway system this week.
Associated Press reporters at the scene described hearing a new detonation, though it was unclear whether it was a controlled police detonation or something else.
Earlier, a witness speaking on Belgian state broadcaster RTBF described hearing two blasts and shots from heavy weapons during the police raid on the Schaerbeek neighborhood.
About 50 officers appear to be involved in the operation. It is unclear whether it is linked to Tuesday’s attacks. A tram passing through the area was stopped and evacuated and police cordoned off a wide perimeter of streets.
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2:15 p.m.
Belgian state media is reporting that two explosions have been heard and one person has been detained in police raids in the Brussels neighborhood of Schaerbeek.
It is not clear whether the raids are linked to the investigation into deadly attacks Tuesday on Brussels’ airport and subway system. At least one suspect in those attacks is at large, and it is unclear whether there were other accomplices.
State broadcaster RTBF says multiple police operations are underway in Schaerbeek, and one person has been detained. It says one explosion was heard at the start of the operation and cited witnesses describing gunfire.
Police earlier this week found a large stash of explosives in an apartment in Schaerbeek believed to have been used by suicide bombers in Tuesday’s attacks.
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1:45 p.m.
The family of two New York City siblings has confirmed that authorities confirmed they died in the bombings in Brussels.
Belgian authorities and the Dutch Embassy positively identified the remains of Alexander and Sascha Pinczowski.
The information was issued Friday by James Cain on behalf of the Pinczowski family. Cain is the father of Alexander’s fiancé, Cameron Cain. He says the family is “grateful to have closure on this tragic situation.” The siblings were on the phone with a relative while at Brussels airport when the phone went dead.
They were Dutch nationals, according to officials in the Netherlands, but both apparently had lived in the U.S. for some time.
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1:30 p.m.
A German magazine is reporting that two people with possible links to people involved in the Brussels attacks were arrested separately in Germany this week.
Der Spiegel, which didn’t name its sources, reported that a man whom Turkish authorities flew to Amsterdam last summer along with one of the El Bakraoui brothers was arrested in Duesseldorf Thursday. The magazine said authorities are looking into whether the two knew each other.
The brothers were among the Brussels suicide bombers in Tuesday’s attacks that killed 31 people.
Der Spiegel as well as broadcasters SWR and RBB reported that another man was arrested in Giessen on Wednesday. According to Friday’s reports, the man received two suspicious text messages on the day of the attacks: one containing the name of one of the attackers, and the other the French word “fin” (“end”).
Local prosecutors couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on the Good Friday holiday.
Federal prosecutor’s office spokeswoman Frauke Koehler would only say that authorities “are of course looking into all leads, but so far we have no knowledge of any operational links between the attacks in Brussels and Paris and Germany.”
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12:50 p.m.
At Brussels’ Place de la Bourse, where thousands have gathered to place candles and leave flowers, city archives staff were peeling rain-sodden messages of solidarity off the ground, drying them with paper towels, and putting them into plastic bins.
The workers – who wore fluorescent vests emblazoned with the words “We are working to protect and preserve your messages” – stepped gingerly among the flags, tea candles and beer bottles left as tokens of support, slowly picking the sopping hand-written notes and stacking them into the bins.
The plaza has become a memorial site, covered in flags from a dozen countries and messages in multiple languages.
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12:45 p.m.
British officials say a U.K. citizen died during the attacks in Brussels earlier this week.
They confirmed that David Dixon, a computer programmer living in Brussels, was killed in the bombing on the Brussels subway.
Officials said seven other British nationals were injured, too.
Dixon’s family has asked for privacy and indicated no statements will be made.
A Chinese national is also reported to have been killed, according to the Chinese Embassy in Belgium. He was identified only by his surname – Deng. No further details were released.
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Noon
A U.S. official says at least two American citizens have been confirmed killed in this week’s attacks in Brussels.
The announcement comes as Secretary of State John Kerry is visiting the city to express his condolences to the Belgian people.
Speaking after meeting with Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, Kerry said 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.”
He did not give a specific number but a senior official said the families of two Americans had been informed of their deaths in Tuesday’s attacks. The official, who was not authorized to speak to the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, did not have further details.
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10:55 a.m.
Belgium’s nuclear agency has withdrawn the entry badges of some staff and has denied access to other people amid concern the country’s nuclear plants could be a target for extremists.
Nuclear control agency spokeswoman Nele Scheerlinck said Friday that “in recent days, several people have been refused access to the nuclear sites.”
But she said the move “is not necessarily linked with the terrorist attacks.”
Immediately after Tuesday’s attacks on the Brussels airport and subway, security was boosted around Belgium’s nuclear sites and hundreds of staff were sent home.
Scheerlinck said the decision to withdraw badges or deny access usually takes weeks and is based on information from the intelligence services and police, as well as a person’s criminal record.
She declined to say how many were refused entry, but denied Belgian media reports that 11 staff had badges withdrawn at the Tihange plant since early last week.
10:15 a.m.
Officials say a man detained in a counterterrorism raid in a Paris suburb has connections to the suspected ringleader of the Paris attacks.
Two French officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to be able to discuss an ongoing investigation, said the man detained Thursday in Argenteuil is Reda Kriket, a 34-year-old Frenchman wanted since January on suspicion of links to terrorism.
A Belgian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity for the same reason, said Kriket was convicted in absentia in July along with Abdelhamid Abaaoud and others for being part of a recruiting network for jihad in Syria.
Authorities have identified Abaaoud as the ringleader of the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris. He died in a police raid a few days later.
France’s interior minister said the man detained in Argenteuil was in the “advanced stages” of a plot to attack the country. He said there was no evidence “at this stage” to link him to last year’s Paris attacks or this week’s attacks in Brussels.
– By Associated Press Writers Lori Hinnant in Paris and John-Thor Dahlburg in Brussels.
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9:05 a.m.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has arrived in Brussels for counter-terrorism talks with EU and Belgian officials and to pay his respects to the victims of this week’s attacks.
Kerry landed at the still-closed Brussels airport for a brief, hastily scheduled stop from Moscow, where he said the attacks underscored the urgency of unity in the fight against the Islamic State group. The group has claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s bombings at the airport departure terminal and a downtown subway station that in total killed 31 people and wounded 270.
On his five-hour visit Kerry is set to meet with European Union Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel and Foreign Minister Didier Reynders as well as King Philippe. He will also lay a wreath at a memorial site at the airport for attack victims.
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8.45 a.m.
The Netherlands’ foreign minister says three Dutch citizens were killed in the bombing at Brussels airport.
Foreign Minister Bert Koenders said in a statement Friday that the victims were a woman from the eastern city of Deventer and a brother and sister from the southern Limburg province who live in the United States. He did not release their identities.
Koenders, who is on a visit to Indonesia, says “it is terrible that these people have been killed by the arbitrariness of terror.”
This story was originally published March 25, 2016 at 8:24 AM with the headline "Two Americans among dead in Brussels attacks, U.S. official says."