About 35 people were killed and more than 200 others injured – including three American missionaries — in coordinated suicide strikes by ISIS jihadists at the Bussels airport and a subway station, officials said.
ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks, which were launched four days after the dramatic capture of Salah Abdeslam, the prime suspect in the Nov. 13 slaughter in Paris.
“Islamic State fighters carried out a series of bombings with explosive belts and devices on Tuesday, targeting an airport and a central metro station in the centre of the Belgian capital Brussels,” wrote Amaq, a news agency affiliated with the terror group, according to Reuters.
Saying the attacks were in response to Belgium’s support of the international coalition fighting ISIS, the group threatened to bring “dark days” to the alliance, the Independent of the UK reported.
The suicide explosions at Zaventem Airport killed at least 14 people during the morning rush hour, when thousands of passengers and personnel were milling about, airport CEO Arnaud Feist said.
The blasts were from a suicide belt and a suitcase bomb, according to reports. A third bomb was discovered at the airport later and detonated in a controlled explosion.
Among those injured at the airport was Sebastien Bellin, 37, a European professional basketball player who played collegiately in the US, ESPN reported.
The former Oakland Golden Grizzlies and Marist player underwent surgery, but shrapnel was still lodged in his leg and hip, Belgian pro team BC Oostende announced.
Others injured at the airport were a British national, an Indian woman who was a crew member on Indian carrier Jet Airways and a Starbucks worker at the airport, The Guardian reported.
NBA legend Dikembe Mutombo was at the airport at the time of the attacks — but assured his fans: “I am fine,” TMZ reported.
“God is good. I am in Brussels Airport with this craziness. I am fine,” he wrote on Facebook.
About 20 people were killed in an explosion at the Maalbeek Metro station, close to the European Union headquarters, as the Belgian capital went into a lockdown.
More than 200 people were wounded in the attacks at the airport and subway station, several critically.
After the attacks, Belgian officials said raids were conducted in the Brussels neighborhood of Schaerbeek, where police found an explosive device with nails, chemical products and an ISIS flag, ABC News reported.
Belgian police released surveillance camera images of three suspected jihadists in the explosions at the airport, the Belga news agency reported.
Three men could be seen pushing baggage carts past the check-in area. The two suspected of setting off the suicide blasts were seen wearing gloves.
The third man, wearing a thick, light-colored jacket with a black hat and glasses, was being sought by authorities.
The jihadists may have used an explosive nicknamed the “Mother of Satan,” which terrorists favor because it contains TATP, or acetone peroxide, the same deadly explosive used in the Paris attacks, the Telegraph reported.
The substance does not contain nitrogen, making it easier to beat screening devices that rely on the chemical element to detect bombs.
“This is a day of tragedy, a black day,” Prime Minister Charles Michel said on national TV. “There are many dead, many injured. What we feared has happened. We realize we face a tragic moment. We have to be calm and show solidarity.”
As European leaders proclaimed the continent to be at war, Michel said he feared that more attacks would be launched.
Michel said earlier that there was no immediate evidence linking Abdeslam to the attacks.
Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said authorities feared terrorists could still be at large in Brussels, home to both NATO and the EU.
Among the injured at the airport were three American Mormon missionaries from Utah, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.
An American serviceman and his family also were injured, the Independent reported, but no information was immediately available.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints identified its injured members as Richard Norby, 66, of Lehi, Joseph Empey, 20, of Santa Clara, and Mason Wells, 19, of Sandy.
The three, serving within the faith’s Paris Mission, were with a fourth, female missionary — Fanny Rachel Clain, of Montélimar, France — who was en route to serve a mission in Ohio. She had gone through security and was unharmed.
Witnesses said victims lay in pools of blood at the airport, their limbs blown off. There were chaotic scenes as passengers fled in panic, with a thick plume of smoke rising from the main terminal building.
“A man shouted a few words in Arabic and then I heard a huge blast,” airport baggage security officer Alphonse Lyoura told AFP, his hands bloodied. “A lot of people lost limbs. One man had lost both legs and there was a policeman with a totally mangled leg.”
Authorities found a discarded bomb belt at the airport that the bomb squad planned to detonate, reported VTM, which also said a suspicious package was found at the University of Brussels.
After his arrest Friday, Abdeslam said he had created a new network and was planning new attacks.
The NYPD is increasing security throughout New York City as a result of the attacks, saying there will be an increased presence of cops on the streets and in subways in all five boroughs.
“Until we learn more, the department has deployed additional counterterrorism resources across the city including: the Counterterrorism Response Command, the Strategic Response Group and Hercules Teams,” the department said in a statement.
“At this time, there is no known indication that the attack has any nexus to New York City. We will continue to follow the situation in Belgium closely with the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the FBI and adjust the department’s deployments accordingly.”
President Obama was briefed on the attacks during his visit to Cuba and US officials were in close contact with their Belgian counterparts, a White House official said, Reuters reported.
“This is yet another reminder the world must unite…in fighting the scourge of terrorism,” Obama said.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter told lawmakers Tuesday that bloodbath in Brussels will not deter the US from its plan to defeat ISIS as soon as possible.
“No attack — no attack will affect our resolve to accelerate the defeat of ISIL,” Carter said, using another acronym for ISIS.
Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement that the US was working “to determine the status of all American citizens in Brussels.”
The embassy there issued a statement telling Americans to stay put and “take the appropriate steps to bolster your personal security.”
Reacting to the Brussels attacks, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said he would close the borders.
“I would close up our borders to people until we figure out what’s going on,” he said on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends.”
“We have to be very, very vigilant with who we let into this country,” he said. “We are taking in people without real documentation. We don’t know who they are or where they’re from. We don’t learn. I will tell you I’ve been talking about this for a long time. This whole thing will get worse as time goes by.”
Trump said Belgian authorities should perform waterboarding — and more — to thwart possible future attacks.
“The waterboarding would be fine. You could expand the laws more than waterboarding to get the information from these people,” he said on NBC’s “Today” show.
Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, said the terrorists would not succeed.
“The people of Brussels, of Europe, and of the world will not be intimidated by these vicious killers,” she said in a statement. “Today Americans stand in solidarity with our European allies. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of those killed and wounded, and all the people of Belgium.”
Gov. John Kasich said Obama should return to the US to handle the crisis.
“He ought to work with the, you know, the heads of state around the world. They ought to assemble teams and they need to examine these vulnerabilities we have, because without effective human intelligence, without coordination and cooperation among all the civilized nations, we get these gaps and these gaps get exploited by these people who are intent on killing civilized people,” the GOP candidate told MSNBC.
Passengers at the Brussels airport fled in a panic as a plume of smoke rose from the main terminal building after windows were blown out of the departure hall and ceiling tiles came crashing down, leaving blood splattered throughout the building.
“We heard the explosion and felt the blowback,” Jean-Pierre Lebeau, a French passenger who had just arrived from Geneva, told AFP, adding that he had seen wounded people and “blood in the elevator.”
Witnesses told Belga news agency they heard shouts in Arabic before the blasts hit the airport. At the metro station, at least 15 people with bloodied faces were being treated by emergency services on the pavement, an AFP reporter said.
Anthony Deloos, an employee of services company Swissport, said the first blast took place near a counter where customers pay for overweight baggage. The second explosion was near a Starbucks, he said.
“Twenty meters (yards) from us we heard a big explosion,” and shredded paper was flying through the air, Deloos said. He first thought a billboard had fallen down, but a colleague told him to run.
“I jumped into a luggage chute to be safe,” he told The AP.
Starbucks shut all of its coffee shops in Belgium after the attacks.
“Amidst reports of attacks targeting Brussels Airport and a metro station, initial indications are that an explosion took place outside our store within the airport,” the coffee giant said in a statement.
“This store and all other Starbucks stores in Belgium will remain closed until further notice.”
Airport check-in worker Tom De Doncker, 21, was near the site of the second explosion.
“I saw a soldier pulling away a body,” he said. “It felt like I was hit too” from the concussion of the explosion.
A witness at the airport said he had heard a man shouting in Arabic before the first blast.
“I heard ‘bang’, and then a man screaming in Arabic,” Alphonse Youla, 40, who works for a security firm, told Politico. “There was a couple withdrawing cash in front of me. The woman exploded and lost both legs. Her husband lost one leg and so did a police officer.
“The windows of shops were blown out and there was blood everywhere,” he added.
Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first explosion, told BFM TV that the second, louder blast ruptured pipes, mixing water with people’s blood.
“It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed,” he said. “There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere. We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene.”
Jean-Pierre Herman was at the airport, where he had just greeted wife, Tankrat Paui Tran.
“My wife just arrived,” Herman said. “I said ‘hello,’ we took the elevator and in the elevator we heard the first bomb. When we came out of the elevator at that moment the second bomb exploded and then we saw doors flying, (the) glass ceiling come down and smoke.”
Charlotte McDonald-Gibson, a correspondent for the Independent in Brussels, said she was having breakfast in a café overlooking the runway as she waited for a flight to Frankfurt when all hell broke loose.
“No one knew what was going on. We were hurried to the main gate area of the terminal. An announcement on the loudspeaker said ‘evacuate, evacuate, this is a general notice to evacuate the airport,’” she said. “But no one did anything. There were no staff to tell anyone what to do. I overheard one staff member say, ‘This has never happened before so we don’t know what to do.’”
Amateur video shown on France’s i-Tele showed passengers including a child fleeing out of the terminal
Marc Noel, 63, of Raleigh, North Carolina, was about to board a Delta flight to Atlanta when the first explosion occurred nearby.
“People were crying, shouting, children. It was a horrible experience,” he told The AP. He said his decision to stop at a shop might have saved his life.
“I would probably have been in that place when the bomb went off,” he said.
Passengers were led onto the tarmac and more than 200 flights to Brussels were diverted or canceled, according to flight tracking service Flightradar24
At the Maelbeek station near the EU headquarters, rescuers set up a makeshift medical treatment center in a pub. Dazed commuters poured in from metro entrances as authorities tried to set up a security cordon.
“The Metro was leaving Maelbeek station for Schuman when there was a really loud explosion,” said Alexandre Brans, 32, wiping blood from his face. “It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the Metro.”
The rampage comes days after Friday’s dramatic arrest of Abdeslam in the neighborhood of Molenbeek.
The Brussels-born French national, the main suspect in the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris in which ISIS terrorists slaughtered 130 people, remains in a high-security prison in Belgium.
Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said Abdeslam had been planning some sort of new attack.
“These attacks mark another low by the terrorists in the service of hatred and violence,” said EU President Donald Tusk.
The 28-nation union said in a statement that the attack “only strengthens our resolve to defend European values and tolerance from the attacks of the intolerant.”
French President Francois Hollande said the attacks struck at “the whole of Europe.
“Through the attacks in Brussels, the whole of Europe has been hit,” Hollande said in a statement, AFP reported.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said: “We are at war. Over the past few months in Europe we have endured several acts of war.”
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Paris was deploying 1,600 additional police to border crossings and air, sea and rail infrastructure, Reuters reported.
“Access to public transport will be restricted to people with tickets and/or ID cards,” and they may be frisked, he said after a meeting with Hollande.
Cazeneuve also called on Europe to “further boost coordination and the fight” against terrorism.
British officials are warning Britons against all but essential travel to Brussels. The government said a team of British police were dispatched to Brussels to help with the investigation.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel pledged to Michel, Belgium’s prime minister, her country’s “full solidarity” and said her Cabinet will discuss the bombings on Wednesday.
“We will work in every way with his government and the Belgian security forces to find those responsible for today’s crimes, detain and punish them,” Merkel said.
“Our strength lies in our unity, and our free societies will prove to be stronger than terrorism.”
The bloodshed forced the closure of transportation services across the region – as airports across Europe, including London, Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Prague, announced added security measures, AFP reported.
Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon announced that the country’s terror threat was raised from three to a maximum of four and Brussels residents were told to “stay where you are.”
Deputy Prime Minister Alexander De Croo urged residents to stay off their cell phones to prevent the city’s mobile networks getting saturated.
Belgium’s royal palace in central Brussels was evacuated, Belgian public broadcaster RTBF said. King Philippe and Queen Mathilde were in shock, but the outlet did not specify whether they had been in their residence at the time of the attacks.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said the attacks “show once more that terrorism knows no borders and threatens people all over the world,” a Kremlin statement said. “The fight against this evil requires vital international cooperation.”
ISIS supporters hailed the attacks on social media.
“The state will force you to reevaluate your ways a thousand times before you are emboldened to kill Muslims again, and know that Muslims now have a state to defend them,” one posted on Twitter.
With Post Wires