Police with dogs and drones secure a residential area in Molenbeek, Belgium.
By James McAuley, Griff Witte and Michael Birnbaum-March 18
Four other people were also arrested, three of them members of Abdeslam’s family, as police carried out three raids over a four-hour operation, a spokesman for the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office said. One of the four, identified as Monir Ahmed al-Hadj, was wounded, the spokesman, Eric van der Sypt, told reporters in Brussels.
Abdeslam, a 26-year-old French national of Moroccan descent, was shot in the leg during the operation, officials said.
Police say Abdeslam drove a car to Paris from Brussels, where he lived, as part of a plan to participate in the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris that killed 130 people and wounded at least 368 others. But he fled the scene, possibly after shedding a suicide vest. Seven other attackers died, including one of his brothers. The Islamic State terrorist group claimed responsibility for the assault.
Abdeslam, a resident of the Molenbeek neighborhood of Brussels before the attacks, had eluded authorities since then despite a massive manhunt across Europe.
Hours after the initial raid, explosions were heard in a Brussels neighborhood where police searched for other suspected terrorists. Belgium’s VTM television channel reported that another suspect was arrested there.
