Brussels attacks: Have blunders hampered Belgian investigation?

Belgian authorities have admitted several errors before, during and since the Brussels attacks. Brussels had already been prepared for an attack, as several of the Paris attackers had come from Belgium and it had already been placed under lockdown weeks earlier.

Unconfirmed reports have suggested that Belgium had been warned of plans to attack the airport

And yet, security forces were often a step behind the suspects, and operational failures on the day of the bombings meant that reactions were sometimes too slow.

Why was the metro running?

Trains were still running 21 minutes after the government had decided to evacuate the metro

The Belgian government has insisted that its response to the airport bombings on 22 March was clear. The decision to evacuate the Brussels metro and five rail stations was taken at 08:50 on 22 March, 52 minutes after two bombs went off at Brussels airport at 07:58.

Khalid el-Bakraoui (L) blew himself up on the Brussels metro and Brahim el-Bakraoui was one of the airport bombers

But the third bomb went off at 09:11 on a metro train at Maelbeek station, in the heart of the European quarter. Metro company STIB said it received no order from the government to halt services. The second attack was well over an hour after the first and ministers are under pressure to explain what went wrong.