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Ninth suspect arrested in Belgium over Paris attacks

Armed special forces of the police are pictured during search operations in the city center of Brussels, December 20, 2015. (AFP photo)

Belgian authorities in Brussels have arrested a man in connection with last month’s terrorist attacks in the French capital, bringing the total number of detainees over the Paris attacks to nine.

Federal prosecutors on Thursday announced that police made the arrest in the capital city earlier this week.

An unnamed federal prosecutor told AP news agency that authorities did not announce the arrest sooner in order not to alert potential accomplices. The source said more details will be released about the incident.

Belgian newspaper DH said the detained individual had been contacted by Hasna Ait Boulahcen, the woman who gave shelter to the presumed ringleader of the Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud.

Boulahcen and Abaaoud were both killed in a police raid in France days after the Paris attacks.

On Monday, police detained five people in several searches in Brussels, but all were released later that day after questioning.

On November 13, assailants struck several areas in the French capital, Paris, leaving 130 people dead and over 350 others injured. The attacks were claimed shortly afterwards by the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group already wreaking havoc in Iraq and Syria.

Some of the attackers had lived in Belgium. Since the attacks, Belgian authorities have carried out a series of raids searching for key suspects believed to have lived in the Molenbeek area.

Belgium, the institutional capital of Europe, has been at the center of probes into the Paris attacks since it emerged that two of the incident’s assailants had been living there.

Since December 11, Belgium changed its laws to allow house searches 24 hours a day in terrorism investigations.


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