Update, 4:15 p.m.: Belgian authorities reportedly now believe that Najim Laachraoui, who may have made the bombs used in yesterday’s attacks and was earlier identified as a suspect, set off a suicide bomb at the Brussels airport. The current thinking, then, is that Ibrahim el-Bakraoui and Laachraoui blew themselves up at the airport while el-Bakraoui’s brother Khalid el-Bakraoui detonated a suicide bomb just over an hour later in a Brussels subway station.
Update, 12:50 p.m.: According to a report in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Belgian intelligence authorities had “advance and precise intelligence warnings” that attacks on Brussels’ airport and subway system were imminent but failed to take proper security precautions to prevent them. While this is a serious accusation, Haaretz’s report is light on details of what exactly was known in advance about the timing and location of the bombings. Here’s the key part of the article:
The Belgian security services, as well as other Western intelligence agencies, had advance and precise intelligence warnings regarding the terrorist attacks in Belgium on Tuesday, Haaretz has learned.
The security services knew, with a high degree of certainty, that attacks were planned in the very near future for the airport and, apparently, for the underground railway as well.
Despite the advanced intelligence, the intelligence and security preparedness in Brussels, where most of the European Union agencies are located, was limited in its scope and insufficient for the severity and immediacy of the alert.
Haaretz also says the attack was planned in Raqqa, Syria, the capital of ISIS’s “Islamic State,” and that it was “apparently” triggered by last week’s arrest of Paris-attack suspect Salah Abdeslam.
Original post, 8:18 a.m.: European officials have identified three of the men behind Tuesday’s terror attacks in Brussels, according to Belgian media: Khalid el-Bakraoui, Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, and Najim Laachraoui. The first two are brothers and are believed to have died during the initial blasts at the Brussels airport, which have been described as suicide bombings, while the third is suspected of making the explosives that were used in the attacks.
The deaths of the Bakraoui brothers remain unconfirmed, though there is even more confusion about the fate of Laachraoui. Media reports in Belgium early Wednesday suggested that he had been arrested following a massive manhunt, though the Washington Post’s sources say that while an arrest has been made in connection with the attacks, the person in custody is not Laachraoui. The reason for the conflicting reports is unclear, though the confusion likely has something to do with the fact that the lion’s share of reporting coming out of Brussels is relying on unnamed intelligence sources. Frédéric Van Leeuw, the Belgian federal prosecutor, is scheduled to brief the media later Wednesday, at which point we should know more.
The suspects appear to have been connected with Salah Abdeslam, the man believed to be the sole remaining survivor of the 10 men who carried out the terrorist attacks in Paris this past November that killed 130 people. Abdeslam was arrested in Belgium late last week, and officials have suggested that the attacks may have been in response to his capture. Here’s the New York Times on what authorities know about Khalid el-Bakraoui:
Khalid el-Bakraoui is believed to have rented the apartment in Forest, under a false name, as well as one in Charleroi, Belgium. The raid in Forest turned up fingerprints belonging to Mr. Abdeslam. … In 2011, Khalid el-Bakraoui was sentenced to five years in prison for attempted carjackings; at the time of his arrest, he had been in possession of assault rifles.
And about his brother:
Ibrahim el-Bakraoui was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2010 after shooting at police officers following an attempted robbery of a currency exchange office.
And about Laachraoui:
A day earlier, the Belgian authorities identified Mr. Laachraoui, a 24-year-old Belgian citizen, as an accomplice of Mr. Abdeslam and enlisted the public’s help in finding him. Mr. Laachraoui went to Syria in February 2013, and, using the name Soufiane Kayal, was one of two men using fake Belgian identification cards who were with Mr. Abdeslam in a Mercedes on Sept. 9 as they passed through a checkpoint between Hungary and Austria. Mr. Laachraoui was also carrying a fake Syrian identification card.
Mr. Laachraoui is now being sought as the possible bomb maker. His DNA was found on at least one of the suicide belts used in the Paris attacks and at a house in the Schaerbeek district of Brussels, according to Claude Moniquet, a former intelligence official in France and the co-founder of a Belgium-based think tank, the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center.
A total of 34 people were killed and more than 200 injured in Tuesday’s attacks.
Read more of Slate’s coverage of the Brussels terror attacks.