Time: 6:32 p.m. CEST Update: 9:53 p.m. CEST
Prosecutors in France said that police arrested five, including the main suspect for the Paris attacks on November 13, 2015 after hours of police raids in Brussels’ suburb Molenbeek on Friday, March 18.
A police source and local media say that police wounded in the leg and arrested Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam, but this was not yet officially confirmed. Another man also died, while two others may have escaped. “We got him” said Theo Francken, Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration.
French President Francois Hollande, who left earlier the EU Council Summit in Brussels after the news on arrest, said he expected Abdeslam to be extradited to France “as rapidly as possible”.
Earlier, BBC News reported that people could hear shots in the Molenbeek area of Belgium’s capital. The Prime minister of Belgium, urgently leave and EU Council summit in Brussels. In the last year’s Paris attacks when 130 people died, Abdeslam is a key suspect. One man with Algerian national Mohamed Belkaid also died in the raid in the southern Forest suburb.
Abdeslam lived in Molenbeek, suburb part of Brussels, before the attacks on November 13. His brother Brahim blew himself up. Police sealed parts of Brussels on Friday, where EU Council earlier agreed with Turkey of migrant and refugees crisis. Police raid Molenbeek after Abdeslam fingerprints were found in a Brussels flat that was raided on Tuesday.
Aleksandra Dukovska 