Man arrested in connection with Belgian attack

 

Belgian police have arrested a man in a raid in the capital Brussels in connection with recent terror attacks in the city.

The man, carrying a backpack, was shot in Schaerbeek district after refusing to obey police orders, media say. Explosions were also heard.
Ten other suspects have been held in Belgium, Germany and France.
Police are trying to prevent further attacks after Tuesday's Brussels bombings.
An investigation is continuing into the bombings, which killed 31 people and have been linked to November's Paris attacks.
The Belgian prosecutor has named another of the suicide bombers at Brussels airport as Najim Laachraoui.
So-called Islamic State (IS) has said it carried out both sets of attacks.
An area near Schaerbeek's Meiser square was sealed off by heavily armed police and military vehicles on Friday.
At least three explosions were reported. Bomb disposal personnel and robots were at the scene.
The operation is now said to have finished.
Schaerbeek mayor Bernard Clerfayt said a man had been arrested and shot in the leg.
Eyewitnesses reported seeing a man who had emerged from an underpass armed with a machine gun being shot in the legs by police.
A local resident, named as Marios, also described gunfire.
"I heard two very loud shots," he told the press.
"Immediately within seconds police arrived... The streets were evacuated..."
Schaerbeek is one of the districts where arrests were carried out on Thursday. French police sources say the latest raid was also linked to Thursday evening's operation in a Paris suburb during which another attack was apparently foiled.
US Secretary of State John Kerry, visiting Brussels, said that IS would be destroyed.
Standing alongside Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, he expressed condolences for the victims and solidarity with Belgium, declaring "Je suis Bruxellois".
The Western alliance would continue its fight to destroy IS, Mr Kerry said.
"We will not be intimidated. We will not be deterred."
 The Brussels bombings continue to have political repercussions, with questions surrounding the issue of whether more could have been done to prevent them.
Turkey has said it arrested and deported one of the bombers, Brahim El-Bakraoui last June, warning Belgium he was a "foreign fighter" - but the message was "ignored". The Dutch authorities had also been alerted, Ankara said.
Bakraoui is one of three men who carried out the bombings at Brussels airport, killing 11 people.
The Belgian interior and justice ministers said they had offered their resignations but the prime minister refused to accept them.
The other two airport attackers have not yet been identified. Bakraoui's brother, Khalid, struck at Maelbeek metro station, where 20 people died.
There are reports of a second suspect being sought for that attack. One source told AFP news agency that a man with a large bag had been seen beside Khalid El-Bakraoui on surveillance footage at the metro station.
Meanwhile, the Flemish-language public broadcaster VRT reported that investigators were working on the assumption that the cell had been planning a far bigger attack, involving Paris-style shootings as well as suicide bombings.

Links have also emerged with Salah Abdeslam, a suspect in the Paris attacks.
Abdeslam was arrested and wounded in a police raid on a flat in Brussels last Friday - four days before the attacks in the Belgian capital.
Investigators say Khalid El-Bakraoui used a false name to rent the same flat.