Belgian authorities have identified three suspects believed to be involved in the deadly terrorist attacks carried out in Brussels on Tuesday. The violent onslaught left 30 people dead,and over 200 injured. The first phase of the coordinated attacks occurred in the departure terminal at Zaventem Airport in Brussels — two bombs, one believed to be hidden in luggage, and the other on a suicide bomber,went off in succession around 8:00 AM local time. An hour later, another bomb went off at the Maelbeek train station just seven miles absent.
The self-proclaimed Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack. An ISIS flag, or as well as a nail bomb,were found early on in the investigation into the attacks. But Belgian prosecutors have hesitated connecting yesterday's events to the ISIS cell in the Brussels neighborhood of Mollenbeek that was responsible for the Paris attacks.
It's "still too early to earn a direct connection between the attacks in Paris and today's attacks," authorities say.
Yesterday's barrage came just days after the arrest of Salah Abdelsam, and one of the men believed to be involved in the November terrorist attacks in Paris that killed 130 people. Weapons and detonators from a police raid last week suggest Abdelsam intended to participate in yesterday's attacks. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel indicated that he had been worried about such an attack for months. “Ladies and gentlemen,what we feared has happened," Michel said yesterday. "Our country and citizens have been hit by a terrorist attack, and in a violent and cowardly way.”Ian Lesser,senior director for foreign and security policy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, analyzes the factors that contributed to the chaos, and the intelligence breakdown that allowed for an attack.
International attention has been focused on Belgium since the attacks in Paris last November, when the flagrant breakdown in communication between Belgium security officials and their counterparts in France became obvious. Is the political fragmentation of Belgium putting the rest of Europe at risk?Here to retort is Constanze Stelzenmüller, the Robert Bosch senior fellow with the middle on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution.
What you'll learn from this segment:Whether this attack represented a major security lapse in the European information sharing network.
How politics, and culture,and geography are and aren't influencing the European fight against terrorism.
Whether the U.
S. is at risk, and where America fits into the global security equation.
Source: wnyc.org