What We Know About the Brussels Attacks

'We are at war,' says France's PM
By Kate Seamons,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 22, 2016 9:43 AM CDT

The death toll has crept above 30 following Tuesday morning's attack on Brussels' Zaventem international airport and a metro station in the center of the city. What we know so far:

  • CBS News tweets that two Americans were injured; a State Department employee has not been accounted for.
  • One of the Brussels airport bombs contained nails, per a local TV station as reported by the AP.
  • The BBC reports the bombing at the Maelbeek metro station came one hour after twin airport blasts. The bomb went off in the middle car of a three-car train as it was moving along the station platform.
  • The Guardian has video interviews with survivors of the airport attack. "I feel like it's the end of the world," said one of what she was thinking after hiding under a sink as the ceiling came down.
  • American Brian Carroll, 31, tells the New York Times how he reacted after the bomb went off as he rode the subway: "I headed toward an exit. There was smoke and soot everywhere. There was glass everywhere. It was like running through a cloud of dust. I saw the exit of the station was destroyed. I ran out of the station, I ran as far as I could."
  • Brussels Mayor Yvan Mayeur framed the attacks as "unprecedented murderous violence," per the Washington Post. "We are at war," said French Premier Manuel Valls in a roundup of world-leader reactions from USA Today. "We have been enduring acts of war for many months in Europe."

  • USA Today notes #JeSuisBrussels and #JeSuisBruxelles are trending on Twitter.
  • A cartoon drawn by Le Monde's Plantu "seems likely to become iconic," suggests Vox. It shows two weeping figures, one bedecked in the colors of the French flag and comforting the other, colored in the Belgium flag's black, yellow, and red. Beneath: "13 novembre ... 22 mars."
  • Another "emblem of solidarity," per Vox: Tintin.
  • Were the attacks revenge for Salah Abdeslam's Friday arrest? The Guardian asks the currently unanswerable question and outlines the "various basic and important points" raised by the attacks.
(More Brussels attack stories.)

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