Brussels: What we know about the attacks

Here is what we know so far about the terror attacks at the airport and a metro station in Brussels.

• A suspect being hunted by police, known only as the “man in white”, is still on the run.

Earlier suggestions that he had been detained, amid reports of an arrest in the Anderlecht suburb, were later withdrawn.

• Belgian prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said two Brussels suicide bombers have been identified as brothers Ibrahim El Bakraoui, who struck at the city’s airport, and Khalid El Bakraoui, who struck at a Metro station.

The second airport bomber has been identified as Najim Laachraoui.

• Laachraoui, 24, was already believed to be linked to last year’s massacre in Paris. Belgian prosecutors said DNA evidence identified him as being one of the accomplices of Salah Abdeslam, who has been arrested over his alleged involvement in the attacks in France which killed 130 people.
• Ibrahim El Bakraoui left a will on a computer which authorities discovered in a bin in the area of Schaerbeek, Mr Van Leeuw said. The bomber is said to have written: “I don’t know what to do. I’m in a hurry. I’m on the run. People are looking for me everywhere. And if I give myself up then I’ll end up in a cell.”
• Turkish officials said that they warned Belgium last summer that Ibrahim, also known as Brahim, was a terrorist.

He was caught in June last year at the Turkish-Syrian border and deported to the Netherlands but Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said “despite our warnings that this person was a foreign terrorist fighter, Belgium could not establish any links with terrorism”. As a result, the Dutch let him go, it is claimed.

• The death toll is 31, the prosecutor said, but he warned it could rise and reports suggest it has already reached 34. Around 270 people were injured.
• Downing Street said four Britons are among the injured, three of whom are in hospital. It added that it is concerned about one missing British national.
• Briton David Dixon has been named by his family as among those missing.

The IT programmer, from Hartlepool in Co Durham, is thought to have been on the Metro when a bomb exploded during the morning rush-hour on Tuesday. His family is “desperately” searching for him, a friend said.

• Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying they opened fire in the airport and “several” members detonated suicide belts. IS said a suicide bomber was also responsible for the Metro attack.
• Footage from the airport appears to show the two suicide bombers wearing gloves on one hand, possibly used to hide detonators. The explosives were stowed in their luggage and detonated before reaching the security gate, the mayor of Zaventem said.
• Police were approached by a taxi driver who said he had given “a lift to three persons who had big bags”.

Following this, a string of raids across the city on Tuesday evening recovered an explosive containing nails, chemical products, and an IS flag.