RFE/RL's interview with a witness, Joe Cook, managing partner of the Cook Communications public relations firm, who was outside of the Maalbeek metro station near the European Commission building in Brussels immediately after the explosion.
“I was about to enter the tube station at Schuman, right by the European Commission building. As I got there, the police were taping it off. So I had to walk. And I left the commission building area, turned right, walked down the main road, and as I approached Maalbeek, I saw what I thought were very feint wisps of smoke or exhaust fumes and a crowd on the pavement. And as I got nearer, it became clear that something was wrong because there were six, or seven, or eight people on the pavement in various states of shock. Some were stumbling. Some were laying down. Some were being tended to by passers-by and other folk. This was at the very entrance to the metro [at Maalbeek]. It was clear that they were just coming out of the metro. It just dawned on me that something really, really bad had happened.”
“The road was incredibly busy both with pedestrians, who obviously couldn’t take the metro so they were all walking, and horrendous traffic which prevented police and emergency services from getting to the scene. I stayed around for maybe 10 minutes watching, and then a guy with a loud-hailer was asking everyone to move off. So I just made my way. My one real observation was just the length of time that it took for ambulances to get there. By the time I left, I still hadn’t seen an ambulance. Maybe they were all at the airport from the earlier bombs in the day. Or maybe it was the terrible traffic. But I just thought that was unforgivable because some of the people were clearly very, very badly hurt.”
“And the mood [now], I would just say people are stunned that it’s happened here. Just, people are quiet. The metro system is closed. The train station is closed. I haven’t seen any trams running. I’m looking out my window now and the road is completely empty and I can see police closing this road. This is Avenue Louise. It’s a main thoroughfare through central Brussels. It looks like they’ve just closed the whole road, as we are speaking. They’re doing it now. It’s weird.”
Reuters reports:
Belgian police have found a discarded bomb belt at Brussels airport and the bomb squad will explode it, Belgian private broadcaster VTM said. The broadcaster said the bomb squad was also checking a suspect package at the University of Brussels.
AFP reports:
The Belgian authorities urged the media to refrain from reporting on the probe into the triple bomb attacks in Brussels.
Via AFP:
Sunni Islam's leading seat of learning, Al-Azhar, said today's attacks in Brussels "violate the tolerant teachings of Islam," and urged the international community to confront the "epidemic" of terrorism.