Brothers Among 3 Brussels Suicide Attackers; Another Assailant Is Sought
By ALISSA J. RUBIN, KIMIKO DE FREYTAS-TAMURA and AURELIEN BREEDEN

BRUSSELS — Three suicide bombers — including two brothers — carried out the attacks on Brussels on Tuesday, the Belgian authorities announced on Wednesday, as they continued to hunt for at least one more assailant. The toll from the assaults stood at 31 dead and 300 injured.

Investigators were urgently piecing together links between the attacks, on the Brussels Airport and on a subway car, to the November terrorist assaults that killed 130 people in and around Paris in November. The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for both sets of attacks.

In a trash can in Brussels, police found a computer with a document suggesting that the attackers acted out of a sense of urgency and desperation after the capture on Friday of Salah Abdeslam, the last surviving direct participant in the Paris attacks.

In the document, which authorities called a will, the elder brother, Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, 29, wrote that he no longer felt safe, did not know what to do and feared that if he dallied, he would end up “next to him in a cell.” It was not immediately clear if “him” was a reference to Mr. Abdeslam.

Mr. Bakraoui and another man blew themselves up at Brussels Airport at 7:58 a.m. Tuesday, in two explosions, nine seconds apart. At 9:11 a.m., his younger brother, Khalid el-Bakraoui, 27, carried out a suicide attack at the Maelbeek subway station.

The authorities on Wednesday evening were trying to determine if the other suicide bomber at the airport was Najim Laachraoui, 24, a Belgian who, like Mr. Abdeslam, has been linked to the Paris attacks.

The Bakraoui brothers had a history of violent crime, but Belgian officials said they had no reason to suspect that they were terrorists until recently.

On Wednesday evening, however, Turkey’s president contradicted that account , announcing that his government had detained Ibrahim el-Bakraoui near the Syrian border on June 14, alerted the Belgian government that he “was a foreign terrorist fighter,” and then deported him.

“Despite our warnings that this person was a foreign terrorist fighter, the Belgian authorities could not identify a link to terrorism,” the president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said at a news conference in Ankara, the nation’s capital.

The Belgian government did not have an immediate response to his announcement.

In a news conference on Wednesday morning, Frédéric Van Leeuw, the Belgian federal prosecutor, described the trail that led investigators to identify the brothers.

After the attacks, a taxi driver approached the police and led them to a house on the Rue Max Roos, in the Schaerbeek section of Brussels, where he had picked up three men, according to Mr. Van Leeuw. There, the authorities found about 33 pounds of the explosive material triacetone triperoxide, or TATP — a large amount. (By comparison, officials say the suicide belts used by the Paris attackers each contained less than a pound of TATP.)

At the house in Schaerbeek, investigators also found nearly 40 gallons of acetone and nearly eight gallons of hydrogen peroxide. Acetone, a solvent found in nail polish remover, and hydrogen peroxide, found in hair bleach, are among the ingredients used to make TATP. The investigators also found detonators, a suitcase full of nails and screws, and other materials that could be used to make explosive devices.

As the investigation continued, Belgium remained in a state of mourning and on the highest level of alert. The nation observed a minute of silence at noon for the victims. The airport, where about 10 people died, stayed closed. Many subway lines were not running. The Maelbeek station, where about 20 people were killed, remained shut. Schools reopened, but many employees stayed home.

Prime Minister Charles Michel of Belgium said his country would show resolve. “The European values of democracy and of freedom are what was savagely assaulted by these tragic attacks,” he said after meeting in Brussels with his French counterpart, Prime Minister Manuel Valls. Mr. Valls said, “Our two peoples are united in this hardship.”

On Wednesday, the Belgian police raided a building in the Anderlecht neighborhood of Brussels. Officers in hazmat suits carted out files and plastic boxes from the building, while masked officers stood guard outside. Two police officers in the neighborhood said an arrest had been made, but the identity of the person arrested was not clear.

Several Belgian news outlets reported last week that the Bakraoui brothers, who grew up in the working-class Laeken neighborhood of Brussels, had been wanted for questioning since the March 15 raid. It was not clear why the authorities did not formally ask the public to help find them.

Ibrahim el-Bakraoui was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2010 for shooting at police officers after the attempted robbery of a currency exchange office. It was not clear when or why he was released — or how he ended up in Turkey. (The Turkish government said he was deported to the Netherlands, not Belgium, but did not provide an explanation.)

In 2011, Khalid el-Bakraoui was sentenced to five years in prison for attempted carjacking; at the time of his arrest, he was in possession of assault rifles. Interpol issued an arrest warrant for him in August after he violated the conditions of his parole.

Khalid el-Bakraoui is believed to have used a false name to rent a safe house in Charleroi, Belgium, and the apartment in Forest. Fingerprints belonging to two of the Paris attackers, Abdelhamid Abaaoud and Bilal Hadfi, were found in the Charleroi house on Dec. 9, and Mr. Abdeslam’s prints were found in the Forest apartment after the March 15 raid.

Speaking on Belgian radio on Wednesday morning, Interior Minister Jan Jambon of Belgium said that police raids would continue, and that the threat status would remain at its highest level, 4.

“There are many hypotheses to put on the table,” he said. “It’s up to investigators to sort out fact from fiction.”

Mr. Jambon discounted speculation that the attacks were reprisals for the arrest of Mr. Abdeslam, saying it was unlikely that terrorists “could have launched attacks of a scale seen yesterday in two, three days.”

Speaking later to RTL radio, Mr. Jambon said it was also unlikely that the attacks could have been avoided even if Belgium had been at the highest threat level instead of Level 3, which was imposed after the Paris attacks.

“We were at Level 3; that means the probability is enormously elevated,” he said, adding that Belgium had “everything possible in place to avoid a catastrophe like what happened yesterday, like other countries.”

Mr. Jambon added, “A zero risk is not going to happen.”

“Level 4 is when we have information that an attack will occur at a certain moment, in a certain place,” he continued. “We did not have that information.”

The Place du Grand Sablon, a handsome square in central Brussels that normally pulsates with tourists and shoppers seeking chocolates and luxury goods, was silent on Wednesday. Several shops were closed. At one cafe, the few customers were hunched over newspapers.

Under gray drizzle, the road in front of the Maelbeek subway station remained closed. Most employees of the European Union buildings in the area, which is usually bustling on a weekday morning, appeared to have stayed home.

“It’s a scary situation,” said Anton Zeilinger, an Austrian diplomat who lives and works nearby and who was at his office when the station was bombed on Tuesday. He said of the attackers, “A few bombs won’t destroy the way we live, even if they want to.”

Dozens of people continued to congregate at the Place de la Bourse to light candles and place flowers, drawings and other tokens of grief at a makeshift memorial in the middle of the square. Hundreds gathered at noon to stand in silence, before breaking into applause.

In the Eurostar lounge at the Gare du Midi, one of the main train stations in Brussels, passengers also observed a minute of silence at noon. Access to the station was permitted through just one entrance, and soldiers searched bags and luggage before allowing anyone in to buy tickets or to walk to the platforms. The subway lines that connect the train station to the rest of the city were closed.

Gilles de Kerchove, the European Union’s counterterrorism coordinator, told the broadcaster RTBF that the apparent link between the Bakraoui brothers and Mr. Abdeslam suggested that the Brussels attacks were not the work of another active terrorist cell.

From a security perspective, that could mitigate the current threat, he suggested.

Brussels Airport said it would be closed at least through Thursday.

Areas like the Brussels Airport departure hall are particularly vulnerable because, like at most Western airports, bags are not searched until after check-in. That allows a bomb to be packed into a suitcase that could have far more space than an explosive vest and therefore be far more lethal.

In terrorism-plagued countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, and across the Middle East, bags are put through scanners when travelers enter the airport.

At least one of the bombs at Brussels Airport did far more damage and appears to have been far more powerful than those used in Paris, blowing out many of the windows in the large departure hall and shaking nearby buildings.

布魯塞爾恐攻證實兄弟檔犯案 第3嫌仍在逃

比利時聯邦檢察官廿三日召開記者會，確認前一天布魯塞爾恐攻的兩名嫌犯為哈利德和伊布拉辛．伊巴卡洛兄弟 （Khalid and Ibrahim el-Bakraoui），他們分別在機場和地鐵車廂引爆自殺炸彈身亡。伊布拉辛是警方發布的機場監視畫面中三名嫌犯中間的那位，另外兩名嫌犯之一已引爆自殺炸彈身亡，身分不明，另一人仍在逃，有媒體指認他是製作自殺炸彈腰帶的拉奇拉烏伊（Najim Laachraoui），但檢察官未證實。

檢察官范李伍表示，廿九歲的伊布拉辛在電腦裡留了一封遺書，他寫道：「一直逃亡，不知道還能做什麼， 到處被搜捕，不再安全，若再等下去，可能與那個人關在同一間牢房。」他指的那個人顯然是被捕的巴黎恐攻嫌犯阿布岱斯蘭。

根據載三名嫌犯去機場的計程車司機提供的線索，警方廿二日晚間搜索布魯塞爾斯哈貝克區一間公寓，搜出十五公斤威力強大的熵炸藥（TATP）、一百五十公升的丙酮、引信、裝滿鐵釘的袋子和其他製作炸彈的材料。

范李伍說，機場監視畫面中右邊戴帽子的嫌犯把裝有最大一顆炸彈的行李留在機場後逃走，炸彈已被防爆小組引爆。范李伍未證實這名嫌犯的身分，但有多家媒體指認他是已被通緝的巴黎恐攻自殺炸彈腰帶的製作人拉奇拉烏伊，廿三日還一度傳出他已被捕，後來證實為烏龍。

伊巴卡洛兄弟和拉奇拉烏伊不但都早已被警方列為注意名單，而且都跟巴黎恐攻嫌犯有關連，是同一夥人，他們在逃亡期間仍有能力發動新的恐攻，顯示比利時的反恐有極大漏洞。

比利時反恐部隊十五日在布魯塞爾南方福雷搜捕的住處，就是伊巴卡洛兄弟之一出面承租，後來落網的阿布岱斯蘭當時還從該處逃脫，警方則在屋內發現大批武器和伊斯蘭國旗幟。

廿五歲的拉奇拉烏伊在布魯塞爾斯哈貝克區長大，三年前曾前往敘利亞，被視為在布魯塞爾吸收年輕聖戰士的要員，雖然被國際通緝，卻依然能重返比利時。

比利時政府要求歐盟召開部長級會議因應反恐，歐盟預定廿四日召集各國內政部長會議共商因應反恐；歐盟反恐事務官員指出，歐盟應盡更多力對抗威脅。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/24/world/europe/brussels-attack.html

紐約時報中文版翻譯：
http://cn.nytimes.com/world/20160324/c24belgium/zh-hant/

Video：A breakdown of the locations in Tuesday’s terrorist attacks in Brussels.
http://nyti.ms/1XKtXjC

Video：Belgian royalty and European leaders gathered in the European Commission building on Wednesday to honor the victims of the Brussels attacks.
http://nyti.ms/1RkJnr0

Slideshow：Brussels After the Attacks
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2016/03/24/world/europe/brussels-after-the-attacks/s/24belgium-ss-hp-slide-LXT0.html

2016-03-24．聯合報．A13．國際．布魯塞爾記者蕭白雪、編譯田思怡