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Salah Abdeslam is on the run from police after the Paris attacks in November. Photograph: DSK
The fingerprints of one of Europe’s most wanted men, Salah Abdeslam, a prime suspect in November’s terrorist attacks on Paris, have been found in the Brussels apartment that was raided by police this week.
Abdeslam, a 26-year-old French national who grew up in Brussels, fled Paris for Belgium by car hours after the 13 November attacks which killed 130 people. He is believed to have played a key role in organising the attacks.
Belgian federal prosecutor Eric Van der Sypt confirmed that Abdeslam’s fingerprints were found at a flat that was raided in the Forest area of Brussels on Tuesday, where a shoot-out with police saw another gunman shot dead next to an Islamic State flag. Two suspects fled that raid and are still on the run.
Van der Sypt said it was not yet known whether Abdeslam might be one of the two.
He said it had not been established how old the fingerprints were, or how long Abdeslam spent in the apartment.
A joint team of French and Belgian police investigating the Paris attacks had arrived on Tuesday afternoon to search the flat on the Rue du Dries which they reportedly believed was empty because the water and electricity had been cut off in recent weeks.
But from behind the door, gunmen with automatic weapons opened fire on them. Four police were injured in the shootout. One gunman was shot dead by a police sniper through a window and two suspects escaped despite a vast search operation.
The gunman who was killed was Mohamed Belkaïd, a 35-year-old Algerian living illegally in Belgium and known to police for a theft case in 2014. “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.
Abdeslam, 26, whose family is of Moroccan descent, once ran a bar in Brussels. Police believe he played a key role in the logistics of the Paris attacks and escorted the three suicide bombers who blew themselves up at the Stade de France as part of the coordinated attacks.
Investigators are also considering whether he planned to carry out his own suicide attack in the 18th arrondissement of the French capital, and perhaps backed out. His brother blew himself up and died at a Paris bar on Boulevard Voltaire during the attacks.
Abdeslam had called friends to drive to collect him in Paris hours after the attacks. While they were driving him back to Belgium, the car was briefly stopped at the French-Belgian border and Abdeslam’s ID was checked, but he was allowed to continue through to Belgium and has been on the run ever since, the focus of an international manhunt.
Abdeslam reportedly stayed holed up in an apartment in the Schaerbeek district in north Brussels for three weeks after the Paris attacks.
In January, Belgian authorities said they had found two apartments and a house used by Abdeslam and other suspects in the run-up to the attacks.
A fingerprint belonging to Abdeslam was found in one apartment along with traces of explosives, possible suicide belts and a drawing of a person wearing a large belt.
Authorities also found DNA traces from Bilal Hadfi, another of the attackers who blew himself up with a bomb vest near the French national stadium during the November attacks.
The other premises were a flat in Charleroi – a town south of the capital, where a major airport is located – as well as a house in the rural village of Auvelais near the French border.
Belgian authorities are holding 10 people suspected of involvement with Abdeslam, but there has been no report of him being sighted.
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