Family of Belgian suicide bomber raided

30 November 2005

BRUSSELS — Police raided 10 premises in Brussels overnight in a suspected link to reports on Tuesday that a Belgian woman recently carried out a suicide bomb attack in Iraq.

The woman is thought to have carried out the bomb attack on 9 November near the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. About five or six people were possibly killed in the attack, news agency Belga reported.

And according to an RTL France report, the suicide bomber was a young Belgian woman from Brussels who converted to Islam after marrying a radical Islamic man of Moroccan ancestry. The man is now also reportedly dead.

Police have kept the woman’s family under surveillance for some time and raided 10 homes on Tuesday night. The raids were reportedly co-ordinated at a federal level.

While no one has officially confirmed reports the woman carried out the bomb attack, various sources have indicated that the report is true.

The Belgian judiciary has launched an investigation into the woman’s contacts in Belgium.

However, it is not 100 percent certain if (or how many) people were killed in the attack, despite the figures given by news agency Belga.

Newspaper ‘De Standaard’ has quoted US military sources saying the attack was against US soldiers and that none of them were killed in the attack.

And there were two other bombings on 9 November, one in Baquba and one in the north-east of Baghdad. Which one the woman carried out, is yet to be confirmed.

Subject: Belgian news