Belgian police arrest 6 in bombing investigation

France thwarts militant plot in Paris 'that was at an advanced stage'

Belgian police arrested six people in their probe of Tuesday's Islamic State suicide bombings in Brussels, while authorities in France said they had thwarted a militant plot "that was at an advanced stage".

The federal prosecutor's office in Belgium said on Thursday that the arrests came during police searches in the Brussels neighborhoods of Schaerbeek in the north and Jette in the west, as well as in the center of the Belgian capital.

The arrests came days after suicide bombers hit the Brussels airport and a subway train, killing at least 31 people and wounding some 270 in the worst such attack in Belgian history.

The attack in Brussels, which is home to the European Union and NATO, has heightened security concerns around the world and raised questions about European countries' response to the threat from Islamist extremists.

The IS group, which claimed responsibility for the Brussels bombings, also took credit for coordinated attacks in Paris in November that killed 130 people at cafes, a sports stadium and concert hall.

In Paris on Thursday, authorities arrested a French national suspected of belonging to a militant network planning an attack in France.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said in a televised address that the arrest helped "foil a plot in France that was at an advanced stage".

Cazeneuve added that the man arrested "is suspected of high-level involvement in this plan. He was part of a terrorist network that planned to strike France".

After the arrest by the French counterterrorism service, DGSI, the agency raided an apartment building on Thursday night in the northern Paris suburb of Argenteuil. French TV station ITele reported that explosives had been found in the man's house.

"At this stage, there is no tangible evidence that links this plot to the attacks in Paris and Brussels," added Cazeneuve, who was in the Belgian capital earlier on Thursday.

Resignation offers

Earlier on Thursday, Belgium's interior and justice ministers offered to resign over a failure to track an IS militant expelled by Turkey as a suspected fighter and who blew himself up at Brussels Airport.

Brahim El Bakraoui was one of three identified suspected suicide bombers who hit the airport and metro train.

Bakraoui's brother Khalid, 26, killed about 20 people at Maelbeek metro station in the city center. De Morgen newspaper said he had violated the terms of his parole in May by maintaining contacts with past criminal associates, but a Belgian magistrate had released him.

Interior Minister Jan Jambon and Justice Minister Koen Geens tendered their resignations to Prime Minister Charles Michel, who asked them to stay on. "In time of war, you cannot leave the field," said Jambon, a right-wing nationalist.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said Bakraoui, 29, had been expelled in July after being arrested near the Syrian border and two officials said he had been deported a second time. Belgian and Dutch authorities had been notified of Turkish suspicions that he was a foreign fighter trying to reach Syria.

Meanwhile, the brothers who carried out the bombings were known to US authorities and listed in US terrorism databases, television network NBC reported on Thursday.

The report cited two unnamed US officials as saying that Ibrahim and Khalid El Bakraoui were listed as a "potential terror threat" in US databases but that they would not specify on "which of the many US terrorism databases the brothers were listed".

AP - AFP - Reuters

A Belgian forensic police officer takes an evidence photo following Tuesday's bomb attacks in Brussels, Belgium, on Friday. Vincent Kessler / Reuters

(China Daily 03/26/2016 page9)