Two brothers, Ibrahim El Barkraoui and Khalid El Bakraoui, have been identified as suicide bombers in Monday’s Islamic terrorist attacks in Brussels by Belgian authorities. Two other suspects remain unidentified, one of them dead following his own suicide bombing and another having fled the scene.
The middle man in the above photograph has been identified as Ibrahim El Bakraoui. Both El Bakraoui and the as of yet unidentified man on the left killed themselves in suicide operations in Zaventem airport. The black gloves on both mens’ left hands are believed to be concealing detonators. The man on the right is currently being pursued by authorities, and believed to be Najim Laachraoui.
Belgium’s federal prosecutor Frédéric van Leeuw confirmed the identities of the El Bakraoui brothers.
Ibrahim El Bakraoui, 29, killed himself in one of the first two explosions in the airport. 11 people were murdered and over 90 were injured. Najim Laachraoui left behind a suitcase with a “very large explosive charge” which was subsequently detonated in a controlled explosion by Belgian authorities.
Khalid El Bakraoui, 27, killed himself a little over an hour later inside a subway car in a suicide operation, murdering 14 more people and injuring an additional 130.
Following the release of photographs of the two brothers, a taxi driver claiming to have driven the two men to the airport contacted the authorities. The taxi driver directed authorities to the neighborhood where he picked up the two brothers, after which authorities found a nail bomb, chemicals, and an Islamic flag popularized by ISIS during a search of a home in the area.
In April of 2013, two Muslim brothers – Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaecv – of Chechen extraction murdered 4 and injured 280 in their commission of the Islamic terrorist bombing of the Boston Marathon and subsequent manhunt.
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