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ISLAMABAD — Pakistan has rounded up more than 5,000 militant suspects, then released most of them, in the two days since a suicide bomber killed at least 72 people in a park in Lahore at Easter, a provincial minister said on Tuesday.

Investigators were keeping 216 suspects in custody pending further investigation, said Rana Sanaullah, a state minister for Punjab province from Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's ruling party.

Details of the sweeping raids aimed at anyone suspected of violent extremism came as the Taliban faction claiming responsibility for the attack issued a new threat on Tuesday, singling out the media.

Sanaullah said "5,221 people have initially been detained. 5,005 have been released after verifying their identities, and 216 people have been referred for further investigation”.

"If someone is found to be guilty, they will be charged," told journalists in the Punjab province capital of Lahore.

Army spokesman Gen. Asim Bajwa said the military and the paramilitary Rangers were conducting raids across Punjab, Pakistan's richest and most populous province, in rapid response to the Easter bombing.

"Right now in Rawalpindi, Multan and elsewhere, operations are ongoing, intelligence agencies and Rangers and army troops are carrying out operations," he told reporters in Islamabad.

Jamaat-ur-Ahrar, the Taliban faction that claimed responsibility for the blast aimed at Christians celebrating Easter, warned Pakistani media they could be the next target.

"Everyone will get their turn in this war, especially the slave Pakistani media," Ehsanullah Ehsan, spokesman for the group, tweeted. "We are just waiting for the appropriate time."

Even as authorities pursued militants across Punjab, hundreds of ultra-conservative Muslim protesters remained camped out in front of parliament on Tuesday in the capital, Islamabad, days after clashing with police.

Mobile phone networks in the capital were blocked for security purposes for a second day in a row.

The Easter bombing was Pakistan's deadliest attack since a 2014 school massacre claimed by the Taliban killed 134 students.

The attack, which included 29 children among the 72 dead, showed the militants can still cause carnage despite military raids on their northwestern strongholds.

Lahore is the capital of Punjab, Pakistan's richest and most populous province, and Sharif's political heartland.

"Let Nawaz Sharif know that this war has now come to the threshold of his home," tweeted Ehsan. "The winners of this war will, God willing, be the righteous mujahideen."

Sanaullah said at least 160 raids have been carried out since Sunday night by a mixture of police, counter-terrorism and intelligence agents and confirmed that army, and paramilitary forces would be used in future operations.

"This operation will include all law enforcement agencies," Sanaullah said.

Military campaign

Military and government officials on Monday said that the army was preparing to launch a new paramilitary counterterrorism crackdown in Punjab, as it did more than two years ago in the violent southern megacity of Karachi.

By allowing this, the civilian government once again ceded special powers to the military to fight militants.

Punjab provincial leaders, particularly among Prime Minister Sharif's party, have long resisted suggestions of bringing in the paramilitary Rangers to fight extremism in reported centres of radicalism including Multan in southern Punjab.

In Karachi, the Rangers' crackdown has cut back the rate of militant and criminal violence sharply, but also drawn accusations of human rights abuses and the targeting of opposition politicians.

A possible renewal of their mandate by the Sindh provincial government is the subject of heated debate there.

Army spokesman Gen. Bajwa said the government had agreed to send whatever forces are most appropriate to capture extremists.

Jamaat-ur-Ahrar, which has declared loyalty to the Daesh terror group, has carried out five major attacks in Pakistan since December.

In recent years, Pakistan has cracked down on movements that target its own citizens and institutions, including the Pakistani Taliban who are fighting to topple the government and install a strict interpretation of Islamic law.

The army and former governments have been accused of fostering hard-line religious movements to boost their own support and to use militant groups to help pursue objectives in Afghanistan and against Pakistan's old rival India.

However, moves by the government to crack down on extremism have prompted a backlash.

The recent outpouring of anger over the execution in late February of ex-bodyguard Mumtaz Qadri, who assassinated the Punjab governor he guarded because the politician campaigned against Pakistan's harsh blasphemy laws, highlights the tension.

The demonstrators, incensed by the hanging of a man they consider a hero for defending Islam, now demand the immediate execution of hundreds of people in jail on blasphemy charges.

WASHINGTON — A police officer may have been injured by shrapnel on Monday in the US Capitol Visitors Centre when a man fired a gun, media reports and congressional sources said.

There was confusion in early accounts about what occurred but police said a suspect was taken into custody with wounds after shots were fired.

MSNBC-TV reported that an officer who fired at an armed suspect may have been injured by a shrapnel. Police said the suspect was taken to hospital. The officer did not identify or describe the suspect and he added that there were no additional suspects.

A US government official told Reuters that initial reports were that a suspect walked into the Visitors Centre, pointed a gun at one of the police officers on duty and a shootout erupted.

The official said no evidence had materialised of a connection to terrorism.

Separately, CNN reported that a person tried to gain entry into the White House but was caught.

Congress is in recess, with few lawmakers in Washington but the shooting happened just a few hours after a drill for an active shooter took place at the Capitol, creating further confusion.

The secret service temporarily cleared tourists from an area surrounding the White House after the incident, but activities quickly went back to normal. Capitol Hill was placed in lockdown immediately after the shooting but was later lifted.

Cathryn Leff, a licensed therapist, tweeted that she was at the visitor’s centre when she heard gunshots while going through a security check point.

“That moment when it goes down. Everyone is screaming & running and you can’t see where the #ShotsFired are from,” tweeted Leff(@Cathrynlefflmft).

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backed down on Monday from his attempts to appoint a former settler leader as ambassador to Brazil, which has since August refused to accept the nomination. 

Netanyahu "decided to appoint Dani Dayan as consul general in New York. He will replace foreign ministry career official Ido Aharoni, who is completing his term," the prime minister's office said in a statement.

The move puts an end to a nearly eight-month stand-off that soured relations with Brasilia.

Brazil did not accept the nomination of the former head of the main West Bank settlements organisation who opposes a Palestinian state.

Netanyahu had refused to reconsider the nomination, insisting that Dayan was the appropriate appointee and the only one Israel would be offering Brazil.

On March 17, the foreign ministry published a tender for the position, signalling it was dropping Dayan's nomination, only to swiftly retract it as an "unfortunate bureaucratic mistake". 

Diplomatic sources said on Monday that the tender would most likely now be reissued.

Dayan himself said his appointment to New York was a victory over Israeli advocates of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, that targets Israel over its occupation of the West Bank.

Dayan said the activism of Israeli BDS advocates against him had legitimised Brazil's refusal to accept his nomination.

Dayan's new appointment was welcomed by Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely as "an important statement to the world" that Israel stood behind a settler "as a faithful and worthy representative of the state".

Dayan was born in Argentina and moved to Israel in 1971, aged 15.

He headed the Yesha Council of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank between 2007 and 2013.

Brazil recognised the Palestinian state in 2010. Jewish settlements in the occupied territories are considered illegal under international law.

BRUSSELS — Belgian prosecutors on Monday released a man they had charged in connection with last week's deadly Brussels bombings, saying they did not have enough information to justify holding him.

The man, named only as Faycal C., had been accused of taking part in the activities of a terrorist group and actual attempted terrorist murder after being detained on Thursday. His home had been searched but no weapons or explosives had been found.

"The evidence which led to the arrest of the man named as Faycal C has not been backed up by the ongoing investigation. As a result, the person has been freed by the investigating magistrate," the prosecutor's office said.

The announcement was a major blow to an investigation that had netted half a dozen people charged with lesser offences in Belgium and others in the Netherlands, Italy and France, where officials said the same network had planned another attack.

Belgian media had identified the man as Faycal Cheffou and a source close to the investigation had said officials believed he was the man caught in security camera footage at Brussels airport moments before two bombs exploded last Tuesday.

Earlier on Monday, police had issued a new appeal for witnesses, saying they were seeking to identify the man seen in the video wearing a light jacket, with a hat pulled down over his face and glasses. The suspected suicide bombers walking alongside him were dressed in black with their heads uncovered.

Police say one man left a suitcase containing a bomb at the terminal and fled while two others detonated their bombs.

The death toll from the attack on the airport, and a subsequent bombing of a rush-hour metro train, rose to 35 on Monday, excluding the three men who blew themselves up.

Around 340 people were wounded and 96 were still being treated in hospital, of whom 55 were in intensive care, a health ministry statement said.

A Europe-wide hunt for suspects has revealed links with the network that killed 130 people in Paris last November, as well as foiling a new potential attack on France last week, officials said. But several suspects are reported to be still at large.

Others at large

Daesh has claimed responsibility for both the Paris and Brussels attacks. These have exposed weaknesses within intelligence services in Belgium, where some of the Paris attackers lived, as well as insufficient cooperation between security services across Europe.

Dutch anti-terrorism police arrested a 32-year-old suspect on Sunday in Rotterdam on France's request, and Italy arrested an Algerian on Saturday suspected of having forged documents for militants linked to the Brussels and Paris attacks.

Germany has also conducted raids but its Federal Criminal Police Office was among European security agencies still hunting for at least eight mostly French or Belgian suspects on the run in Syria or Europe, Die Welt am Sonntag newspaper said.

The US State Department confirmed four US citizens were among victims of nine different nationalities, including Belgian.

Belgian Health Minister Maggie De Block said more of those wounded in the attacks had since died. "Four patients died in hospital. Medical teams did everything possible. Total victims: 35," she said in a tweet.

Other foreigners killed were British, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian and Swedish.

The airport in Brussels remained closed on Monday and the metro was running a reduced service in the capital, which was largely shuttered for the Easter holiday.

There was no sign of the nationalist protesters who clashed with police on Sunday at the Brussels bourse, where mourners have gathered and placed candles, wreaths and messages for victims.

The State Department has declined to name any of the four US citizens killed, citing respect for their families.

Two of them were identified by relatives as Justin and Stephanie Shults, residents of Belgium originally from Tennessee and Kentucky who were last seen dropping off her mother at the Brussels airport before the explosion in the check-in area.

"The world lost two amazing people," Justin Shults' brother, Levi Sutton, said in a post on Twitter.

"It's not fair."

LAHORE, Pakistan — Pakistan will launch a paramilitary crackdown on militants in Punjab, the country's richest and most populous province, after an Easter Day bombing killed 70 people in the provincial capital Lahore, officials said on Monday.

Sunday's suicide bombing on a public park was claimed by the Pakistani Taliban's Jamaat-ur-Ahrar faction, which once declared loyalty to the Daesh terror group. The group said it was targeting Christians.

The brutality of the attack, Jamaat-ur-Ahrar's fifth bombing since December, reflects the movement's attempts to raise its profile among Pakistan's increasingly fractured militants.

At least 29 children enjoying an Easter weekend outing were among those killed when the suicide bomber struck in a busy park in the eastern city of Lahore, the power base of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Pakistan is a majority-Muslim state but has a Christian population of more than two million.

At the Vatican in Rome, Pope Francis condemned the attack as "hideous" and demanded that Pakistani authorities protect religious minorities.

It was Pakistan's deadliest attack since the December 2014 massacre of 134 school children at a military-run academy in the city of Peshawar that prompted a government crackdown on militancy.

Security and government officials told Reuters that the decision had been made to launch a full-scale paramilitary Rangers operation, giving them powers to conduct raids and interrogate suspects in the same way as they have been in the southern city of Karachi for more than two years.

The move, which has not yet been formally announced, represents the civilian government once again granting special powers to the military in order to fight militants.

"The technicalities are yet to be worked out. There are some legal issues also with bringing in Rangers, but the military and government are on the same page," said one senior security official, speaking on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to share details of the plan.

One other military official and two government officials confirmed the decision on condition of anonymity.

Soft targets

Military spokesman Gen. Asim Bajwa said intelligence agencies, the army and Rangers had already launched several raids around Punjab following the attack, arresting an unspecified number of suspects and recovering arms caches.

Prime Minister Sharif toured hospitals full of victims, promising to bring justice.

"Our resolve as a nation and as a government is getting stronger and [the] coward enemy is trying for soft targets," Sharif said, according to a statement from his office.

Jamaat-ur-Ahrar claimed responsibility for the attack late on Sunday night and issued a direct challenge to the government.

"The target was Christians," a faction spokesman, Ehsanullah Ehsan, said. "We want to send this message to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif that we have entered Lahore."

Rescue services spokeswoman Deeba Shahnaz said at least 29 children, seven women and 34 men were killed and about 340 were wounded, with 25 in serious condition.

Jamaat-ur-Ahrar has claimed responsibility for several big attacks since it split from the main Pakistani Taliban in 2014.

While it mostly focuses attacks in its base of the northwestern Mohmand tribal area, it has previously carried out at least two major attacks in Lahore: one in 2015 that targeted two Christian churches and another at the Wagah border between India and Pakistan in late 2014.

Pakistan has been plagued by militant violence since it joined a US-led campaign against militancy after the September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda attacks on the United States.

While the army, police, government and Western interests have been the prime targets of the Pakistani Taliban and their allies, Christians and other religious minorities have also been attacked.

Security forces have killed and arrested hundreds of suspected militants under an earlier crackdown launched after the 2014 Peshawar school massacre. Militant violence eased, but groups retain the ability to launch devastating attacks.

Most militants, like the Pakistani Taliban, are fighting to topple the government and introduce a strict interpretation of Islamic law.

LAHORE/ISLAMABAD — A suicide bomber killed at least 65 people, mostly women and children, at a park in Lahore on Sunday in an attack claimed by a Pakistani Taliban faction which said it had targeted Christians.

More than 300 other people were wounded, officials said.

The explosion occurred in the parking area of Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park close to children's swings. The park is a popular site for members of Lahore's Christian community, many of whom had gone there to celebrate the Easter weekend holiday.

Witnesses said they saw body parts strewn across the parking lot once the dust had settled after the blast.

"When the blast occurred, the flames were so high they reached above the trees and I saw bodies flying in the air," said Hasan Imran, 30, a resident who had gone to Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park for a walk.

Officials said 65 people were killed and about 300 wounded. Police Superintendant Mustansar Feroz said most of the casualities were women and children.

The Taliban faction Jamaat-ul-Ahrar claimed responsibility for the attack.

"The target were Christians," a spokesman for the faction, Ehsanullah Ehsan, said. "We want to send this message to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif that we have entered Lahore."

"He can do what he wants but he won't be able to stop us. Our suicide bombers will continue these attacks."

Militants in Pakistan have attacked Christians and other religious minorities often over the past decade. Many Christians accuse the government of doing little to protect them, saying politicians are quick to offer condolences after an attack but slow to take any concrete steps to improve security.

Toll may climb

Salman Rafique, a health adviser for the Punjab provincial government, said many of the wounded were undergoing emergency surgery in hospitals.

"We fear that the death toll may climb considerably," he said.

TV footage showed children and women standing in pools of blood outside the park, crying and screaming as rescue workers, officials, police and bystanders carrying injured people to ambulances and private cars.

Dozens of women and children were wheeled into hospitals, covered in blood. Many of the injured were transported to hospitals on taxis and auto-rickshaws due to a shortage of ambulances. Hundreds of citizens arrived outside hospitals to donate blood.

Local television channels reported that many of the dead bodies were being kept in hospital wards as morgues were overcrowded.

"We were just here to have a nice evening and enjoy the weather," Nasreen Bibi said at the Services Hospital, crying as she waited for doctors to update her on the condition of her two-year-old injured daughter.

"May God shower his wrath upon these attackers. What kind of people target little children in a park?"

Soon after the attack, the Punjab government ordered all public parks to be closed and announced three days of mourning in the province. The main shopping areas were shut down and many of the city's main roads were deserted.

The army was called in to control crowds outside the park. Some distraught, sobbing relatives clashed with police and rescue officials.

The United States, a strategic ally of Pakistan, condemned the attack.

"The United States stands with the people and government of Pakistan at this difficult hour. We will continue to work with our partners in Pakistan and across the region ... to root out the scourge of terrorism," White House National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.

Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation of 190 million people, is plagued by a Taliban insurgency, criminal gangs and sectarian violence. Punjab is its biggest and wealthiest province but has traditionally been more peaceful than other parts of Pakistan.

Sharif's opponents have accused him of tolerating militancy in return for peace in his province, a charge he strongly denies.

Last year, a bomb killed a popular Pakistani provincial minister and at least eight others when it destroyed the minister's home in Punjab.

BRUSSELS — Belgian riot police fired water cannon on Sunday to disperse far-right football hooligans who disrupted mourners at a shrine for victims of the Brussels attacks, as police arrested several suspects in a series of new raids.

In scenes that compounded a week of grief for Belgians, black-clad protesters shouting anti-immigrant slogans moved in on the makeshift memorial at Place de la Bourse where hundreds of people had gathered in a show of solidarity.

Under-fire Belgian authorities meanwhile detained four terror suspects after carrying out 13 raids as they seek to round up a web of militants with links to the carnage in the Belgian capital and to attacks and plots across the border in France.

The clashes between the far-right demonstrators and police underscored the tensions in Belgium after Tuesday's Daesh suicide attacks on the airport and the metro system in which 28 people died and 340 were wounded.

"This is our home" and "The state, Daesh accomplice" around 300 hooligans chanted, as they gathered near the square by the stock exchange building, AFP journalists witnessed.

Some trampled on the carpet of flowers, candles and messages left at the site by mourners in recent days while at least one wore a mask with a well-known far-right symbol.

'Fascists! Fascists!' 

Police urged the mourners, who included some Muslims, not to provoke the hooligans, but some chanted "Fascists! Fascists! We're not having it!"

Riot police with helmets and shields corralled the hooligans before dispersing them with high power water jets, and marshalling them onto trains out of the city.

Around 10 people were arrested, police told AFP.

Brussels mayor Yvan Mayeur said police had done "nothing" to stop the hooligans coming to Brussels despite having advance warning, adding that he was "appalled" that "such thugs have come to provoke residents at the site of their memorial”.

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said he "emphatically" condemned the demonstration.

The mourners gathered despite the fact that organisers had earlier called off a "March Against Fear" in Brussels on Sunday at the request of Belgian authorities, who said police needed the resources for the attacks investigation.

In a homily at the medieval cathedral of Saints-Michel-et-Gudule in Brussels, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Malines-Brussels Jozef de Kesel said the attacks "defy understanding”.

"We are confronted with evil on an unimaginable scale which causes so much innocent and useless suffering," the Belga news agency quoted de Kesel as saying. 

"Easter celebrates victory over evil," he added.

'Urgency' to tackle Daesh 

Meanwhile, the Belgian Crisis Centre said 28 people had died in the airport and metro attacks, down from an initial toll of 31 which had included the three suicide bombers. 

Of the 28 who died, 24 have been identified, among them 13 Belgians and 11 foreign nationals, it said. A total 340 people from 19 countries were wounded, of whom 101 remain in hospital — 62 of them in intensive care.

As Belgium struggles to come to terms with the tragedy, recriminations continue over whether the authorities could and should have done more to prevent the carnage, as the links to the November Paris attacks by Daesh grow clearer by the day.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said Sunday the Brussels attacks highlighted the "great urgency" facing Europe to tackle the problem of young jihadists returning from fighting in Syria to carry out attacks.

Police carried out 13 raids Sunday across Brussels and the towns of Duffel and Mechelen to the north, the federal prosecutor said, questioning nine people and holding four for further inquiries.

In the latest piece in the puzzle of the militant networks straddling France and Belgium, prosecutors said they had charged a second man with involvement in a terror group over a foiled plot to strike France. 

The third man 

Overnight, Italian police arrested an Algerian national in connection with the production of fake IDs used by the Paris and Brussels attackers, suggesting their networks spread far and wide and will not be easy to dismantle.

The suspect, named as Djamal Eddine Ouali, 40, was interrogated Sunday but refused to speak, a judicial source said.

On Saturday, a Belgian suspect identified as Faycal Cheffou, widely thought to be the fugitive third bomber from the airport, was charged in Brussels with terrorist murder and participation in a terrorist group.

There has been intense speculation he is the man wearing a dark hat and light-coloured jacket seen in airport surveillance footage alongside Ibrahim El Bakraoui and Najim Laachraoui who blew themselves up.

Brussels airport meanwhile said an examination of the wrecked departure hall showed the structure was stable and authorities will now see if temporary check-in desks can be installed, although it will not reopen before Tuesday.

Veteran French rocker Johnny Hallyday provided a little musical solace to Belgium late Saturday, holding a concert in Brussels despite the fact that US pop star Mariah Carey cancelled a gig citing security fears.

BRUSSELS — Belgium on Saturday charged a suspect thought to be the fugitive third Brussels airport bomber with terrorist murder, as a peace march for the victims was cancelled for security reasons after the attacks in the heart of Europe.

The postponement of the Easter Sunday rally underscored the tension in Belgium as police track members of Daesh cell linked to both Tuesday's Brussels attacks that killed 31 people and a similar assault on Paris in November.

The airport suspect officially identified as Faycal C and named by local media as freelance journalist Faycal Cheffou was arrested on Thursday night and investigators believe he could be the man pictured in airport surveillance footage alongside two other suicide bombers.

The third bomber, wearing a distinctive dark hat and white jacket, has been the subject of a massive manhunt after his device failed to go off in the attack at Zaventem Airport.

Brussels airport said it will not reopen before Tuesday at the earliest as it implements new security measures and repairs the departure hall wrecked by the bombers, believed to be from the Daesh group.

A march had been planned on Sunday from the central Place de La Bourse, which has become a shrine to the victims, but it was cancelled after authorities said it could draw much-needed resources away from the investigation.

“Let us allow the security services to do their work and that the march, which we too want to take part in, be delayed for several weeks,” Brussels Mayor Yvan Mayeur said.

March organisers said the “security of our citizens is an absolute priority. We join the authorities in proposing a delay and ask people not to come this Sunday”.

‘Endless nightmare’ 

Ministers insist they did everything possible to prevent Tuesday’s attacks and track a network also linked to November’s Paris attacks, but the Belgian government is facing a torrent of criticism at home and abroad.

Many believe it failed to do enough to stop young Belgian fighters going to Syria, and two senior ministers have offered to resign after it emerged airport bomber Ibrahim El Bakraoui had been deported from Turkey as a “terrorist fighter”.

“It is an endless nightmare for a country turned upside down,” said Le Soir daily in a front-page editorial.

Pop diva Mariah Carey on Friday cancelled a show in Brussels, saying she was advised to do so “for the safety of my fans, my band, crew and everyone involved with the tour.”

In contrast, veteran French rock star Johnny Hallyday was going ahead with two planned concerts in Brussels over the weekend.

Heavily armed soldiers and police patrolled Brussels and the airport on Saturday, underlining the tense atmosphere in the city that is home to the EU and NATO headquarters.

Prosecutors on Saturday charged three people including Faycal C, who is the first person formally accused over the suicide attacks on the airport and the Maalbeek Metro Station.

He was arrested on Thursday night outside the federal prosecutor’s office with three other people and “has been charged with taking part in a terrorist group, terrorist murder and attempted terrorist murder”, the prosecutor said.

Asked if he was the suspected third bomber dubbed the “man in the hat” alongside bombers Ibrahim El Bakraoui and Najim Laachraoui, a source close to the inquiry told AFP: “That is a hypothesis the investigators are working on.”

Nuclear fears 

Another man arrested in Belgium named as Rabah N. was also charged Saturday over a new plot to hit Paris, deepening the connections in what French President Francois Hollande has described as a single terror cell straddling both France and Belgium.

French police said Friday they had foiled a terror strike in France by 34-year-old Reda Kriket — previously convicted in Belgium in a terror case alongside Paris attacks ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud — and discovered explosives at his home.

A third man, Aboubakar A, was charged with taking part in terrorist activities but prosecutors gave no further details.

A suspect shot in the leg Friday at a tram stop in the Schaerbeek district of Brussels is being held for another 24 hours as investigations into the French plot continue. 

The Franco-Belgian links deepened on Friday when it emerged airport attacker Laachraoui’s DNA was found on bombs at the Bataclan concert hall and Stade de France sites in the Paris attacks.

Belgium’s ageing nuclear power plants meanwhile came under scrutiny as a possible terror risk, with the EU’s anti-terror chief Gilles de Kerchove telling La Libre Belgique newspaper they face the threat of a terrorist cyber-attack over the next five years.

Prosecutors confirmed on Saturday that a security guard at a medical research facility that used radioactive isotopes had been murdered on Thursday but denied there was any terror link.

Officials said Saturday that 24 of the victims from on Tuesday’s attacks have been formally identified and 101 injured people are still in hospital.

SEOUL — North Korea released a new propaganda video Saturday showing a nuclear strike on Washington and then threatened South Korea with a "merciless military strike" for slandering leader Kim Jong-un.

Pyongyang has been ramping up the bellicose rhetoric and propaganda for weeks, since the launch of annual South Korea-US war games that it views as provocative rehearsals for invasion.

Seoul and Washington made the already large-scale joint drills bigger than ever this year in response to the North's nuclear test in January and long-range rocket launch a month later.

Menacingly titled "Last Chance", the video released on Saturday shows a submarine-launched nuclear missile laying waste to Washington and concludes with the US flag in flames.

The four-minute video romps through the history of US-Korean relations and ends with a digitally manipulated sequence showing a missile surging through clouds, swerving back to Earth and slamming down in front of Washington's Lincoln Memorial. 

The US Capitol building explodes in the impact and a message flashes up on the screen in Korean: "If US imperialists budge an inch toward us, we will immediately hit them with nuclear [weapons]."

Video wars 

The North has issued similar videos in the past, including one in 2013 showing the White House in a sniper's crosshairs and the Capitol building exploding in a fireball.

The latest offering was published on the North's propaganda website DPRK Today and shows images from the Korean War, the capture of US spy ship Pueblo in 1968 and the first crisis over North Korea's nuclear programme in the early 1990s.

North Korea has been pushing to acquire a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) capability which would take its nuclear strike threat to a new level, allowing deployment far beyond the Korean peninsula and the potential to retaliate in the event of a nuclear attack.

It has conducted a number of what it says were successful tests of an SLBM, but experts have questioned the claim, suggesting Pyongyang had gone little further than a "pop-up" test from a submerged platform.

Tensions always rise on the Korean peninsula during the annual South-US military exercises, but have reached a particularly elevated level this year.

That is partly due to the nuclear test and the UN sanctions that followed, but also because of the first-time inclusion in the drills of an operation that envisages strikes to "decapitate" North Korea's top leadership.

Getting personal 

Pyongyang has taken that as a direct threat to leader Kim Jong-un and responded with increasingly abusive personal attacks on South Korean President Park Geun-hye.

On Thursday, Kim presided over a huge, long-range artillery drill simulating a strike on Park's office and official residence in Seoul.

And on Saturday, the artillery section of the Korean People's Army (KPA) issued an "ultimatum" demanding Park apologise and punish those who formulated the decapitation strategy.

"If matchless traitor Park Geun-Hye and her group do not respond... the long-range artillery force of the KPA large combined unit on the front will move over to merciless military action," it said in a statement carried by the North's official KCNA news agency. 

The warning came hours after KCNA published a statement by the North's "reconciliation council" that referred to Park as "dog-like", "chicken-like" and a "dirty old woman" who grants sexual favours to the leaders of South Korea's allies.

The insults have multiplied as Park has hardened her stance with the North in recent months, accusing Kim of leading his country along a path of self-destruction and vowing harsh retaliation to any military provocations.

South Korean activists on Saturday launched three balloons carrying tens of thousands of anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border into North Korea.

One balloon was strung with a large banner printed with a Pyongyang-published picture of Kim Jong-un smiling against the backdrop of a missile being assembled. 

"Bring down a firestorm on nuclear maniac Kim Jong-un", read the slogan.

BRUSSELS — Belgian police were on Thursday hunting for a third man filmed with two Daesh suicide bombers at Brussels airport as evidence piled up that the same extremist network was involved in the deadly Paris attacks last November.

With pressure mounting on Europe to improve cooperation against terrorism, EU interior and justice ministers were to hold emergency talks on a joint response to Tuesday's bombings in Brussels, which killed at least 31 people and injured hundreds.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls led calls for a "strong European response", but officials say many states, including France, withhold their most cherished data despite a mantra of willingness to share intelligence.

The chief surviving suspect linking the Paris and Brussels attacks, French national Salah Abdeslam, 26, arrested in the Belgian capital last week, was remanded in custody until April 7 with two other suspects. The public prosecutor said Abdeslam, who is in detention in a prison in Bruges in western Belgium, did not appear in person.

His lawyer, Sven Mary, who requested the adjournment, said Abdeslam was no longer opposed to being extradited to France.

"Salah Abdeslam has asked me to inform you that he wishes to leave for France as quickly as possible," Mary told reporters at the courthouse, saying his client "wants to explain himself".

Mary said Abdeslam was not aware of the plan to attack Brussels.

Turkey's president criticised Belgium for failing to track Brahim El Bakraoui, a convicted armed robber whom it expelled last year and who blew himself up at Brussels airport on Tuesday an hour before his brother Khalid, a fellow convict, killed about 20 people at Maelbeek Metro Station in the city centre.

Deported

A Turkish government official said Bakraoui was deported twice from Turkey in July and August after re-entering the country. His initial deportation was based on police suspicion, conveyed to the Belgian and Dutch authorities, that he was a foreign militant fighter, another official said.

Since he had committed no offence in Turkey he was deported to the country of his choice, the Netherlands. Belgium's inner security Cabinet was meeting on Thursday to discuss the matter. Opposition lawmakers demanded an explanation in parliament.

Belgium’s interior and justice ministers offered to resign on Thursday over a failure to track militants.

Interior Minister Jan Jambon said Prime Minister Charles Michel had asked him to stay on. “In time of war, you cannot leave the field,” Jambon told VTM television. Justice Minister Koen Geens would also stay on, a ministry spokesperson said.

Security sources told Belgian media the other suicide bomber at the airport was Najim Laachraoui, a veteran Belgian fighter in Syria suspected of making explosive belts for November’s Paris attacks, in which 130 people were killed by Brussels-based militants.

The third suspect captured on airport security cameras pushing a baggage trolley into the departures hall alongside Laachraoui and Brahim El Bakraoui is now the target of a police manhunt. He has not been named.

The bespectacled man wearing a cream jacket and a black hat ran out of the terminal, federal prosecutors said, and a third suitcase bomb, the biggest of the three, exploded later as bomb disposal experts were clearing the area, causing no casualties.

Public broadcaster RTBF said investigators now believed a second bomber was involved in the metro attack close to European Commission headquarters. The man was spotted on security cameras carrying a heavy bag, but his identity was unknown and it was not clear if he had died or escaped.

A computer-generated image showed a young man with hollow cheeks, a tiny goatee beard and thick black eyebrows.

US criticism

US Defence Secretary Ash Carter said the bloodshed in the capital of the European Union, not far from NATO headquarters, showed Washington’s European allies should do more to fight Daesh alongside American efforts in the Middle East.

Democratic US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton criticised the lack of cooperation among European countries, saying the EU lacked a system for exchanging air passenger data or a joint intelligence centre to share information.

Opinion polls suggest support in Britain for leaving the European Union in a referendum set for June 23 is gaining ground since the Brussels attacks, which fanned security fears that some politicians have linked to immigration.

US Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, who has suggested torture could be used on militant suspects, said he expected Britain would vote to leave the EU because of concerns about high levels of migration.

Casualties from Tuesday’s attacks came from about 40 nations, drawing an international outpouring of support for Brussels during three days of mourning. Washington said Secretary of State John Kerry would visit Belgium on Friday.

Flemish public broadcaster VRT said the elder Bakraoui brother had been released from a Belgian prison in 2014 after serving four years of a 10-year sentence for armed robbery. He skipped two probation meetings last June and was ordered to return to prison in August, but police could not find him.

The case highlighted Belgium’s problem with some 300 locals who have fought in Syria, the biggest contingent from Europe in relation to its national population of 11 million.

At the time of the Paris attacks, its security service had fewer than 600 staff. The government has since raised spending on police and intelligence.

Foreign Minister Didier Reynders, leading efforts to counter international criticism of Belgian policies toward containing violent extremists among its Muslim community, which makes up about 5 per cent of the population, said security had to be balanced with civil rights.

Brussels airport will remain shut until at least Saturday, with the departure hall sealed off by investigators. Travellers on the busy Easter weekend were diverted to Antwerp, Liege and the northern French city of Lille.

Brussels Airlines advised passengers to arrive up to three hours before their flight because of security measures. There were long lines outside the terminal in Liege as people waited in the rain to put baggage through new outdoor scanners, VRT reported.