UK Edition
Brussels bomber Najim Laachraoui 'worked at airport for five years'
The suspected Isil bomb-maker who blew himself up at Brussels airport last month had worked at the site for five years, it has been reported.
Belgium’s VTM television said Najim Laachraoui had until 2012 worked at the airport that was hit in the coordinated attacks of March 22, which left 32 people dead in the departures hall and at a Brussels metro station.
The TV channel also said that a hidden prayer room had been discovered at Brussels airport shortly before the attacks, "where radicalised staff would meet to pray in secret".
The airport shut down the prayer room at the request of police, VTM reported, adding that investigators have since drawn up a list of "at least 50 radicalised airport employees".
There was no official confirmation that Laachraoui had worked at the airport, and VTM provided no details of what type of work he carried out, beyond saying he had been recruited by a temp agency.
Airport staff are usually subject to a security screening before being given access badges.
Earlier this month, the European Parliament said one of the Brussels bombers had held a summer cleaning job at its headquarters in the Belgian capital in 2009 and 2010. Sources later said that it was Laachraoui, a 24-year-old one-time electrical engineering student.
Since the Brussels attacks it has been confirmed that the recent terror attacks in Belgium and France were carried out by the same gang.
Laachraoui is suspected of being the bomb-maker for the series of attacks in Paris last November, which left 130 people dead and which like the Brussels bombings were claimed by Isil.
Traces of his DNA were found at a Brussels apartment where the suicide belts for the attacks in the city were made.
The Brussels bombings were carried out just four days after Salah Abdeslam, the sole surviving Paris attacks suspect, was arrested last month in the Belgian capital.
Salah has been charged with murder in relation to the Paris attacks.
On Thursday Belgian prosecutors said he had been charged with further offences - of attempted murder - related to a deadly shootout with police in Brussels a week before the suicide bombings there.
An Algerian Islamist suspect was killed and four police officers were wounded in the incident on March 15 which led to Abdeslam's arrest three days later in the Molenbeek area of Brussels.
Abdeslam, 26, is currently awaiting extradition to France.