Brussels bombing: Suspect arrested as brothers named

The prime suspect in the Brussels bombings, Najim Laachraoui, remains at large after an arrest was made by authorities in the Anderlecht district of Belgium's capital on Wednesday. 

The arrest followed media reports that two suicide bombers who blew themselves up in Brussels were believed to be brothers already being hunted over suspected links with Salah Abdeslam, thought to be the sole survivor among the Paris attackers who was apprehended last week.

RTBF named the pair as Khalid and Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, saying Khalid last week rented the Brussels apartment in which police found Abdeslam's fingerprints during a raid.

Police arrested Abdeslam, Europe's most wanted man, in a dramatic operation in Brussels on Friday that had been hailed as a "victory" in Belgium's campaign against terrorism.

Khalid has also been linked to the rental of an apartment in the southern Belgian city of Charleroi, from where Abdeslam and the rest of his Islamic State group-aligned cell are thought to have set off, to carry out the November 13 Paris attacks which left 130 people dead.

A police source told AFP on Tuesday that a man seen in the middle of a group of three men on closed circuit television at the airport just before the twin blasts could have been Ibrahim el-Bakraoui.

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Other reports on Wednesday said one of the brothers, who was not named, could have been involved in Tuesday's attack on the Maalbeek metro station, which left about 20 dead.

Belgian police earlier Wednesday issued an appeal for information about the two men believed to have blown themselves up at the airport.

The police posted several tweets with the caption "Terrorism: who knows this man?", showing CCTV close-ups of two men pushing trolleys with suitcases through the airport departure hall.

They gave three slightly different images for each of the two men who the federal prosecutor said Tuesday had likely blown themselves up in the attack.

Najim Laachraoui, dressed in a light coloured jacket and wearing a dark hat, who was shown with the two others in a CCTV grab issued Tuesday, is believed to have fled the scene and remains the focus of a massive manhunt.