Police fail to catch key Paris suspect in Brussels raid

November 16, 2015 20:33

Belgian police launched a major raid in Brussels targeting fugitive Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam today but the operation ended without any arrests, prosecutors said.

Police meanwhile freed one of his brothers without charge, following his arrest at the weekend in the wake of the attacks in which a third Abdeslam brother took part as a suicide bomber, officials told AFP.

Dozens of officers in balclavas and carrying submachineguns surrounded a house in the run-down immigrant area of Molenbeek in western Brussels, which is increasingly under scrutiny as a hotbed of European militancy.

"The operation is over and the result is negative. No one was arrested," spokesman Eric Van Der Sypt told AFP. The mayor of Molenbeek district where the raid took place also confirmed it was over.

Van Der Sypt had earlier confirmed that the raid targeted Salah Abdeslam -- a 26-year-old former Brussels tram worker who is the subject of an international arrest warrant by French police -- without saying whether he was in the house.

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