Islamic State hails Brussels suicide bombers

BRUSSELS: Islamic State published obituaries on Wednesday of the suicide bombers who killed 32 people in Brussels, confirming investigators´ suspicions that one of them had also made explosives for November´s Paris attacks.

The article in the latest issue of the group´s online magazine Dabiq also credited the other two, the Belgian El Bakraoui brothers, with a lead role in organising the Paris attacks.

Warning of more operations to come, it said: "Brussels, the heart of Europe, has been struck.

"Najim Laachraoui, a 25-year-old Belgian who blew himself up at Brussels airport on March 22, had "travelled the long road to France" after fighting in Syria since 2013."It was Abu Idris who prepared the explosives for the two raids in Paris and Brussels," it added, using Laachraoui´s nom de guerre and calling him "very intelligent".

Investigators have suspected former engineering student was the cell´s bombmaker.

His fingerprints were found on suicide vests used in Paris on Nov. 13 and at a Brussels apartment where militants had made a homemade explosive known as TATP.

It was from there that he and two other men took a taxi to the airport.

One of them was the other airport suicide bomber, Brahim El Bakraoui, 29, an armed robber on parole.

Dabiq said had become a believer while in prison and on his release, with his brother Khalid, had bought weapons and made plans for an attack.

Khalid El Bakraoui, 27, who blew himself up on a metro train at Maelbeek station in Brussels´ EU district, also took up the cause in prison, the article said, describing him as a "natural leader" who had a "vivid, life-changing dream" while jailed for a carjacking.

"All preparations for the raids in Paris and Brussels started with him and his older brother," Dabiq said.

"These two brothers gathered the weapons and the explosives. After the blessed raid in Paris, he saw another dream, which motivated him to carry out an istishhadi (martyrdom) operation."