Paris terror attack suspect Salah Abdeslam was shot and captured in a raid in Belgium on Friday according to multiple news outlets. Abdeslam has been on the lam and a fugitive from the law since he was named a suspect back in November, but on Friday he was apprehended.
Europe’s most wanted terror suspect is said to have suffered a leg injury and arrested in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek. Gunshots and explosions were heard in the Molenbeek area from the raids. The fugitive who had been on the run for four months and eluded an international manhunt was captured in one of four terror raids that were carried out in Belgian’s capital.
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The 26-year-old French national is believed to be the 10th terrorist that help carryout the ISIS attacks in Paris that killed 130 people on November 13, 2015. All of the terrorists who died in the siege were French and Belgian, including one of Abdeslam’s brothers who blew himself up during the terror attacks.
“We’ve got him,” Théo Francken, a Belgian minister, wrote on Twitter.
On Tuesday, a raid in Brussels of suspected terrorists resulted in the death of Mohamed Belkaid. According to a cache of documents, the 35-year-old was believed to be an ISIS fighter who wanted to be suicide attacker. Belkaid is also suspected of helping the Paris attackers.
On Friday before Abdelsam was apprehended, Belgian prosecutors said they found Salah’s fingerprints at the apartment of that raid. Authorities found traces of explosives, possible suicide belts and a drawing of a person wearing a large belt in the Brussels apartment.
Tuesday’s raid was met with quite a bit of resistance as French and Belgian police were greeted with a spray of bullets from automatic weapon when they arrived to the door of the apartment. A police sniper shot the gunman, Belkaid. “Next to his body was a Kalashnikov, a book on Salafism and an Islamic State flag,” according to Thierry Werts, of the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office.
One other suspect in the Paris terror attacks, Mohamed Abrini, is still at large.