France arrests suspect over attack plot ‘in advanced stage’
France arrests suspect over attack plot ‘in advanced stage’
The Belgian police captured a suspect carrying what a broadcaster said was a suitcase full of explosives on Friday, after shooting him in the leg during an operation following Tuesday’s suicide bombings in Brussels.
The federal prosecutor’s office said the arrest was one of three in Brussels on Friday linked to the arrest in Paris the previous day of an Islamist convicted in Belgium in 2015 and suspected of plotting a new attack.
Paris on Thursday arrested Reda Kriket, a French national suspected of belonging to a militant network planning an attack in France.
Nine people in total were arrested since Thursday in Belgium and two in Germany, as European authorities swooped on militants they link both to the Brussels attacks that killed 31 people and to November attacks in Paris that killed 130.
Heavily armed police and military personnel cordoned off an area around a major intersection in the northern Brussels borough of Schaerbeek.
Three blasts could be heard, which the local mayor Bernard Clerfayt said were controlled explosions.
Belgian public broadcaster RTBF quoted Mr Clerfayt as saying the suspect was detained after being wounded and that he was linked to Tuesday’s suicide bombings in Brussels.
It said he had been found to be in possession of a suitcase full of explosives.
