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Brussels Police Find Traces Of Bombs In Apartment Linked To Paris Attacks

Journalists descended on a street in the Brussels district of Schaerbeek, where police found three belts for possible use in suicide attacks, traces of explosives and a fingerprint of wanted Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam.
Emmanuel Dunand
/
AFP/Getty Images
Journalists descended on a street in the Brussels district of Schaerbeek, where police found three belts for possible use in suicide attacks, traces of explosives and a fingerprint of wanted Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam.

A fingerprint of Paris bombing suspect Salah Abdeslam has been found in an apartment in the Schaerbeek district of Brussels, officials say, along with traces of explosives and handmade belts.

The federal prosecutor's office says that after the apartment was rented under an assumed name, people involved in November's deadly attacks in Paris may have used the space to produce explosives and prepare for the attack.

The apartment was first investigated in December, and its contents were publicly confirmed today — including traces of TATP, the same explosive used in the Paris attacks.

Abdeslam remains at large. Investigators believe he's the only person who took part in the Paris attacks to escape alive.

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Bill Chappell is a writer and editor on the News Desk in the heart of NPR's newsroom in Washington, D.C.