26-04-2024 05:12 PM Jerusalem Timing

Bomb-hit Brussels Airport Resumes Flights Sunday

Bomb-hit Brussels Airport Resumes Flights Sunday

Brussels Airport said it will partially reopen on Sunday, 12 days after it was hit by suicide blasts carried out by the so-called ’Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’ (ISIL) takfiri group.

Brussels Airport said it will partially reopen on Sunday, 12 days after it was hit by suicide blasts carried out by the so-called 'Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant' (ISIL) takfiri group, as Belgian prosecutors charged a third suspect with terrorism over a foiled plot to attack France.

The first three "symbolic flights" will take off for Faro, Turin and Athens from Sunday afternoon, Brussels Airport chief executive Arnaud Feist told reporters, and travelers will have to undergo strict new security controls before check-in.

"These flights are the first hopeful sign from an airport that is standing up straight after a cowardly attack," Feist said.

Passengers will have to make use of a temporary check-in facility as the airport's departure hall was wrecked in the March 22 blasts that also struck a metro station in Brussels, killing 32 people.

The attacks came just four days after Belgium arrested the prime suspect in last November's Paris terror assaults and close links have emerged between the attack cells.

European authorities, under pressure to crack down on a tangled web of cross-border terrorist cells, have carried out a number of raids and arrests since then, several of them linked to a foiled plot to attack France.