Belgium's justice minister has pleaded for critics of
Belgium's intelligence failures to focus on the hunt for those behind last
week's Brussels attacks and November's massacre in Paris.
Investigators say they are still looking for at least one
suspect in the attacks seven days ago, when suicide bombers killed 32 people at
Brussels' airport and in a subway station near the European Union headquarters.
Three suicide bombers also blew themselves up.
The Health Ministry and victims identification officials
said 90 people remain in hospital, a third of them suffering from severe burns.
In a joint press conference they said the 32 dead include 17
Belgians and 15 foreigners, while 44 of the wounded are foreigners from 20
nations.
Belgium has faced rising international criticism over its
evident inability to identify and monitor Islamic State activists living in the
Belgian capital who have been deemed responsible both for the March 22 bombings
in Brussels and the November 13 attacks on Paris nightspots that left 130 dead.
Several of those who killed themselves during the attacks or
were subsequently arrested were Belgian nationals of North African background.
"Now is not the time to fight one another. As far as I
know, the enemy is in Syria," Justice Minister Koen Geens said, referring
to the primary power base of the Islamic State extremist group that claimed
responsibility for both attacks.
But authorities in Belgium and the neighbouring Netherlands
faced fresh questions on Tuesday about how much they knew in advance of the
March 22 bombings.
Turkey already has revealed it deported one of the suicide
bombers, Ibrahim El Bakraoui, to the Netherlands in mid-2015 after catching him
near the Syrian border and identifying him to Dutch authorities as a suspected IS
militant.
Dutch Justice Minister Ard van der Steur said that his
country's security services received a note from the FBI on March 16 detailing
what he called the "radical and terrorist background" of the El
Bakraoui brothers.
One, Ibrahim, blew himself up alongside an accomplice at
Brussels airport, while the other brother, Khalid, detonated a bomb inside a
train leaving the Maelbeek Metro station.
The timing of the note and why it was sent to the Dutch
remained unclear. Belgian authorities said they were not informed of its
existence and had no idea where the El Bakroaui brothers were before the
Brussels bombings.
Brussels Mayor Yvan Mayeur, who faces criticism for his own
actions before and after the suicide bombings, said Belgian authorities must
learn painful lessons and improve their ability to combat Islamic militancy.
"Were there mistakes? Did we miss anything? Certainly.
Otherwise these attacks would not have happened," he said. Brussels, he
suggested, would never feel the same.
" There's no such thing as 'normal' anymore," he
said during a visit to Paris.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo pledged solidarity with Belgium as
it begins "a long and painful process of grieving and
reconstruction",
Brussels airport has yet to reopen since the attacks but has
been testing a temporary check-in system for use in coming days. The Metro
system is mostly running again, though under heavy guard.
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