Guard’s killing fuels fears of possible nuclear attack

TWO days after bomb attacks at Brussels Airport and on a packed metro killed 31 people and injured hundreds, a security guard who worked at a Belgian nuclear plant was murdered and his pass was stolen, Belgian media reported yesterday.

The newspaper Derniere Heure said the guard’s badge was deactivated as soon as it was discovered that he had been shot dead.

In a nation on high alert after this week’s attacks, the report stokes fears about the possibility that militants are seeking to get hold of nuclear material or planning to attack a nuclear site.

On Thursday, Derniere Heure reported that the suicide bombers who blew themselves up on Tuesday originally considered targeting a nuclear site, but a series of arrests of suspected militants forced them to speed up their plans and instead switch focus to the Belgian capital.

Late last year, investigators found a video tracking the movements of a man linked to the country’s nuclear industry during a search of a flat as part of investigations into the Islamist militant attack on Paris on November 13 that killed 130 people.

The video, lasting hours, showed footage of the entrance to a home in northern Belgium, and the arrival and departure of the director of the country’s nuclear research programme.

A third man caught on CCTV footage with two bombers who attacked Brussels Airport on Tuesday was named as Fayçal Cheffou in Belgian media yesterday.

In a statement on Friday, officials named “Fayçal C” as one of three men police had detained near the federal prosecutor’s office, the heavily guarded centre of the investigation effort.

It did not say, however, whether he was the third man seen on CCTV footage wearing a hat and a light jacket at Brussels Airport with two other suspects who are believed to have blown themselves up.

Le Soir newspaper said Cheffou was identified by a taxi driver who drove the attackers to the airport. Other media also carried similar reports and said Cheffou was a journalist.

Nine people in total have been arrested since Thursday in Belgium and two in Germany, as European authorities swoop on Islamic State militants they link to the Brussels and Paris bombings.

A suicide bomber blew himself up on a football pitch after a tournament in Baghdad on Friday, killing at least 30 people. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.

A group of suicide bombers from IS killed three Iraqi soldiers yesterday in an attack on a Baghdad military base hosting coalition advisers.—