Hollande: Terrorists being wiped out but threat remains
Suspect takes woman hostage and is shot in leg near Brussels tram station
THE terrorist network behind the attacks in Paris and Brussels is being “wiped out”, Francois Hollande has claimed.
But the French President, speaking after armed police in Belgium launched more raids and made more arrests, warned that the threat remained.
A man suspected of carrying a bomb in a rucksack at a Brussels’ tram station was shot by armed police as elsewhere they swooped on terror suspects linked to a feared imminent attack in France.
“We know that there are other networks,” said Mr Hollande. “Even if the one behind the attacks in Paris and Brussels is in the process of being wiped out, a threat continues to remain.”
Attempting to foil more attacks, the authorities made 10 arrests across Belgium, France and Germany as more evidence emerged, which pointed to one distinct terror cell from so-called Islamic State being responsible for the Paris and Brussels atrocities.
The arrests came as the Foreign Office confirmed that missing Briton, David Dixon, was among the 32 people murdered in the terror attacks in Brussels on Tuesday morning. His family said it had received the “most terrible and devastating news” and appealed for privacy.
It was suggested the 50-year-old IT programmer from Hartlepool had texted his aunt concerned at hearing about the attacks at Zavendam airport, only for him to be killed in the bombing of the Mael-beek metro train near the EU HQ minutes later.
David Cameron offered his condolences. The Prime Minister tweeted: “I am deeply saddened to hear David Dixon was killed in the Brussels attacks. My thoughts and prayers are with his friends and family.”
The Foreign Office said officials know of seven Britons injured in the attacks; three are still being treated in hospital. Chinese, French and Dutch citizens were named as among the dead.
Belgian prosecutors said a total of three people were detained in the latest raids in Brussels linked to the foiled attack in Paris.
In one incident in the Schaer-beek district of Brussels eyewitnesses reported seeing a man emerging from an underpass armed with a machine gun and carrying a backpack suspected of containing a bomb.
It was suggested he had taken a woman at a tram stop hostage. The man was subsequently shot in the leg by the police after he refused to obey their orders. Shots and explosions were heard.
Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel skipped a wreath-laying ceremony at Zavendam airport with US secretary of state John Kerry because of the police operation.
The suspect was said to have been linked to Reda Kriket, 34, who was arrested in a Paris suburb earlier this week as he was in the “advanced stage” of plotting an attack. Police are said to have recovered an arsenal of arms and explosives from his flat.
Flemish-language public broadcaster VRT reported that investigat or s were working on the assumption that the terror cell had been planning a far bigger attack for Easter, involving Paris-style shootings as well as suicide bombings.
Meanwhile, Belgian officials underlined the links between terrorists in Brussels and Paris. They confirmed the second suicide bomber in Tuesday’s attack at the Br ussels airpor t as Najim Laachraoui and said his DNA was found at the sites of the November Paris attacks.
Salah Abdeslam, a suspect in those attacks, was arrested and wounded in a police raid on a flat in Brussels last Friday, just four days before the attacks in the Belgian capital.
Investigators say Khalid el-Bakraoui, the metro suicide bomber, used a false name to rent the same flat.
Two suspects remain on the run. One, dubbed “the man in white”, was pictured pushing a trolley through the airport with Laachraoui and Khalid’s brother Ibrahim before they blew themselves up.
Meanwhile, German magazine Der Spiegel reported two people were arrested in Germany with suspected links to the Brussels/ Paris cell.
It said one had been deported from Turkey with one of the Belgian bombers; the other had received text messages on the day of the attacks containing the name of another bomber and the French word “fin”.