BRUSSELS — Another suspect was arrested over links to the Brussels bombings, Belgian authorities said Saturday as armed police swooped on a city suburb.
A spokesman for Belgium’s federal prosecutor’s office told The Associated Press that a person was detained but no other information was immediately available.
Fifty police officers were on the scene of an anti-terror operation in the Brussels suburb of Etterbeek, with roads closed off and nearby people evacuated.
An apartment complex with a shop on the ground floor, was cordoned off by police and forensics experts were seen entering the building. Police said snipers had also been deployed.
It came after five suspects — including a man also linked to the November 13 massacres in Paris — were arrested Friday. Mohamed Abrini, 31, was taken into custody following five months on the run.
The series of arrests marks a big potential break in the Paris investigation and the search for those responsible for the Brussels bombings in which 32 people were killed.
Abrini had been wanted for the Paris attacks after he was filmed on security footage at a gas station with Salah Abdeslam, one of the alleged Paris attackers, just two days before the massacres in France, authorities said. Abrini was driving a Renault Clio later used by the Paris attackers, prosecutors have said.
Abdeslam was captured four days before the attacks in Brussels.
Prosecutors are trying to confirm if Abrini was the “man in white” pictured on surveillance video at Brussels Airport moments before the first of the March 22 blasts.
An anti-terror police operation is underway in Brussels involving around 50 officers, bomb squad & snipers. Roads sealed, people evacuated.
— Bill Neely (@BillNeelyNBC) April 9, 2016
Separately, Belgian officials refused to discuss the number of tips they had received after Thursday’s fresh appeal for information.
“We are not saying anything because we don’t want to spook the possible suspects still at large. The less they know the better,” Federal prosecutor’s spokesman Eric Van der Sypt told NBC News. “We don’t want the suspects to know the nature of the calls and panic.”
This article originally appeared on NBCNews.com.
Alastair Jamieson
Bill Neely