World

BUENOS AIRES — President Barack Obama said the United States was too slow to condemn human rights atrocities during Argentina's 1976-1983 dictatorship as he honoured victims of the "Dirty War" on Thursday, but he stopped short of apologising for Washington's early support for the military junta.

Obama's state visit to Argentina coincided with the 40th anniversary of the coup that began a seven-year crackdown on Marxist rebels, labour unions and leftist opponents, during which security forces killed 30,000 people.

"There has been controversy about the policies of the United States early in those dark days," Obama said while visiting a memorial park in Buenos Aires dedicated to victims of the dictatorship.

"Democracies have to have the courage to acknowledge when we don't live up to the ideals that we stand for. And we've been slow to speak out for human rights and that was the case here," he said.

Obama's trip, winding up later on Thursday, is part of a wider effort to deepen ties and bolster US influence with Latin America after years of frosty relations with left-leaning governments in the region.

With South America's leftist block now in disarray amid graft scandals and economic recession, Argentina's new centre-right leader, Mauricio Macri, offers Obama a new ally in one of the Americas' biggest economies.

Obama travelled to Argentina from Cuba, where he became the first sitting US president to visit in 88 years and opened a new chapter in engagement with the Communist-ruled island after decades of hostilities.

That policy shift has boosted Washington's standing in a region long wary of being treated as the US "backyard", although US foreign policy under Obama has still been dominated by the Middle East.

Death flights

At the memorial on the banks of the La Plata River, Obama and Macri walked along a stark wall that is known as the Monument to the Victims of State Terrorism and is inscribed with 20,000 names.

In bright sunshine, they walked down to a pier that overlooks the river, dropping white roses into the water to commemorate the dead. Obama bowed his head and stood with Macri in silence.

Survivors of the crackdown say one of the military rulers' tactics was so-called "death flights", where political opponents were tossed into aircraft, stripped and then thrown alive into the river and the Atlantic Ocean to drown.

Washington's early support for the military rulers reflected Cold War thinking, which sometimes put the United States on the side of brutal right-wing governments in Latin America. In a gesture toward Argentines still angry over that legacy, Obama has promised to declassify US military and intelligence records related to the dictatorship-era.

But the US leader was criticised by some rights activists. One group of victims' relatives said the timing of his visit was a provocation.

"We will not allow the power that orchestrated dictatorships in Latin America and oppresses people across the world to cleanse itself and use the memory of our 30,000 murdered compatriots to strengthen its imperialist agenda," the Buenos Aires-based Centre for Human Rights Advocates said in a statement.

Some Argentines welcomed Obama's gestures. "Obama is not going to say outright 'forgive us', but he's saying it through his actions," said Daniel Slutzky, a 75-year-old college professor.

Obama said on Wednesday it was "gratifying to see Argentina champion our shared commitment to human rights", Yet Macri's opponents balk at the suggestion the socially conservative leader is a rights defender.

"It takes courage for a society to address uncomfortable truths about the darker parts of its past. Confronting crimes committed by your own leaders, by your own people — that can be divisive and frustrating, but it is essential to moving forward," Obama said.

Speaking after Obama, Macri said: "We have to reaffirm our commitment to the defense of democracy and human rights. Every day, somewhere in the world they are jeopardised."

Obama's visit to Argentina is a show of support for Macri's sharp turn away from the nationalist policies of his predecessor, Cristina Fernandez, who frequently railed against the United States and Wall Street. Obama praised Macri on Wednesday for his rapid economic reforms.

During his trip to Cuba, the US president challenged President Raul Castro on human rights and political freedoms even as the two men sought to move on from more than half a century of animosity that began soon after Cuba's 1959 revolution.

Obama has been travelling with his family and later on Thursday they were to switch briefly into vacation mode, travelling to the lakeside town of Bariloche in Patagonia for the afternoon before returning to Washington.

THE HAGUE — Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was convicted by UN judges of genocide for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, the worst war crime in Europe since World War II, and sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Karadzic, 70, the former president of the breakaway Bosnian Serb Republic, was found guilty on 10 out of 11 charges brought by war crimes prosecutors at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. He would appeal the decision, his legal adviser said.

"The accused was the sole person within Republika Srpska [the Bosnian Serb Republic] with the power to prevent the killing of the Bosnian Muslim males," said presiding judge O-Gon Kwok, in a reference to the 8,000 killed at Srebrenica.

"Far from preventing it, he ordered they be transferred elsewhere to be killed," the judge said.

Karadzic was acquitted of one count of genocide in various towns across Bosnia during the war of the 1990s.

The three-judge panel said Karadzic was "at the apex of power", heading the self-styled Bosnian Serb Republic and Supreme Commander of its armed forces, when crimes were committed by his troops.

Judges said the 44-month siege of Sarajevo could not have happened without his support; that he committed crimes against humanity in an attempt to purge Muslims and Croats from parts of Bosnia; and that he had intended to eliminate the Bosnian Muslim males of the town of Srebrenica.

Karadzic's legal adviser Peter Robinson said Karadzic was "disappointed by the verdict, astonished by the reasoning and he wants to appeal".

As the judges described the siege of Sarajevo, Karadzic looked pained and his face tightened into a grimace.

Victims' tears

Victims' families in the courtroom, some of then elderly, listened intently when the genocide at Srebrenica was discussed. One wiped away tears as the judge described men and boys being separated from their families.

When Karadzic was ordered to stand for sentencing, he listened with eyes mostly downcast. After judges departed, he sat back heavily in his chair.

Victims' families embraced before quietly leaving the courtroom.

Outside, Hatidza Mehmedovic, who lost her entire family at Srebrenica, said she was enraged by the verdict, and no punishment could have been harsh enough.

"He can live in a cushy prison while I have to live in Srebrenica, where his ideology is still in place," she said.

"I have no sisters, no brothers, no husband."

Karadzic was arrested in 2008 after 11 years on the run, following a war in which 100,000 people were killed as rival armies carved Bosnia up along ethnic lines that largely survive today.

Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said he would stand by the Serbs of Bosnia.

"We will stand by our people and we will protect their existence and their right to have their own state," he said.

Serge Brammertz, the court's chief prosecutor, said he hoped the ruling would make populist politicians in the region more reluctant to hail convicted war criminals as heroes.

"There is nothing heroic about raping persons, about sexual abuse in camps," he said. "There is nothing heroic about executing 7,000 prisoners which have been detained in impossible circumstances. There is nothing heroic to kill with snipers children who are playing."

He said prosecutors may appeal Karadzic's acquittal on the second genocide charge.

The only more senior official to face justice before the Tribunal was the late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, who died in custody a decade ago before a verdict was reached.

Ratko Mladic, the general who commanded Bosnian Serb forces, was the last suspect to be detained over the Srebrenica slaughter and is also in a UN cell awaiting judgment.

The Srebrenica massacre and the Serb siege of Sarajevo were events that turned world opinion against the Serbs and prompted NATO air strikes that helped bring the war to an end.

Karadzic defended himself through his 497-day trial and called 248 witnesses, poring over many of the millions of pages of evidence with the help of a court-appointed legal adviser.

Rejecting the charges against him, Karadzic sought to portray himself as the Serbs' champion, blaming some of the sieges and shelling on Bosnian Muslims themselves. He says soldiers and civilians who committed crimes during the war acted individually.

Opponents of the ICTY say its prosecutors have disproportionately targeted Serbs as 94 of 161 suspects charged were from the Serbian side, while 29 were Croat and nine Bosnian Muslim. 

Prosecutors have been criticised for not bringing charges against two other leaders of that era who have since died — Croatian President Franjo Tudjman and Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic.

Many Serbs, both in Bosnia and Serbia, regard the court as a pro-Western instrument, say Karadzic is innocent and believe his conviction is an injustice for all Serbs.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon hailed the conviction on Thursday of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic of genocide as a "historic day for international criminal justice".

UN war crime judges in The Hague sentenced Karadzic to 40 years in prison after finding him guilty of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre and other atrocities during the Bosnian conflict.

"This judgement sends a strong signal to all who are in positions of responsibility that they will be held accountable for their actions and shows that fugitives cannot outrun the international community's collective resolve to make sure they face justice according to the law," Ban said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the UN rights chief hailed the genocide conviction of Karadzic on Thursday as "hugely significant", saying it showed "no-one is above the law".

"Twenty-one years after Karadzic was indicted, this verdict is a forceful manifestation of the international community's implacable commitment to accountability," UN High Commissioner for Human Rights HH Prince Zeid said in a statement.

He said the verdict was "hugely significant, as it also strips away the pretence that what he did was anything more than political manipulation, and exposes him for what he really was: the architect of destruction and murder on a massive scale".

The UN rights chief said Karadzic's conviction was "symbolically powerful — above all for the victims of the crimes committed during the wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina and across the former Yugoslavia, but also for victims across the world". 

He added that the verdict showed that "no matter how powerful they are, no matter how untouchable they imagine themselves to be, no matter what continent they inhabit, the perpetrators of such crimes... will not escape justice".

Prince Zeid, who served in the UN Protection Force in the Former Yugoslavia from 1994 to 1996, acknowledged that the verdict could still be appealed.

But he said the ruling nonetheless should send a clear message "that no-one is above the law".

The trial, he said, "should give pause to leaders across Europe and elsewhere who seek to exploit nationalist sentiments and scapegoat minorities for broader social ills".

BRUSSELS — Belgium's chief prosecutor named two brothers on Wednesday as Daesh suicide bombers who killed at least 31 people in the most deadly attacks in Brussels' history but said another key suspect was on the run.

Tuesday's attacks on a city that is home to the European Union and NATO sent shockwaves across Europe and around the world, with authorities racing to review security at airports and on public transport. It also rekindled debate about lagging European security cooperation and flaws in police surveillance.

Washington announced that Secretary of State John Kerry would visit Belgium on Friday to demonstrate support.

The Belgian federal prosecutor told a news conference that Ibrahim El Bakraoui, 29, one of two men who blew themselves up at Brussels airport on Tuesday, had left a will on a computer dumped in a rubbish bin near the militants' hideout.

In it, he described himself as "always on the run, not knowing what to do anymore, being hunted everywhere, not being safe any longer and that if he hangs around, he risks ending up next to the person in a cell" — a reference to suspected Paris bomber Salah Abdeslam, who was arrested last week.

His brother Khalid El Bakraoui, 27, detonated a bomb an hour later on a crowded rush-hour metro train near the European Commission headquarters, prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said.

Both men, born in Belgium, had criminal records for armed robbery but investigators had not linked them to militants until Abdeslam's arrest, when police began a race against time to track down his suspected accomplices.

That seems to have prompted the bombers to rush into an attack in Belgium after months of lying low, according to the testament found on the laptop.

At least 31 people were killed and 271 wounded in the attacks, the prosecutor said. That toll could increase further because some of the bomb victims at Maelbeek Metro Station were blown to pieces and victims are hard to identify. Several survivors were still in critical condition.

The Bakraoui brothers were identified by their fingerprints and on security cameras, the prosecutor said. A second suicide bomber at the airport had yet to be identified and a third man, whom he did not name, had left the biggest bomb and ran out of the terminal before the explosions.

Belgian media named that man as Najim Laachraoui, 25, a suspected Daesh recruiter and bomb-maker whose DNA was found on two explosives belts used in last November’s Paris attacks and at a Brussels safe house used by Abdeslam.

De Standaard newspaper, however, citing an unidentified source, named Laachraoui as the second suicide bomber at the airport.

Khalid El Bakraoui rented under a false name the apartment in the city’s Forest borough, where police hunting Abdeslam killed a gunman in a raid last week. He is also believed to have rented a safe house in the southern Belgian city of Charleroi used to mount the Paris attacks.

‘Black days’

Turkey said it had detained Ibrahim El Bakraoui near the Syrian border last year and deported him to the Netherlands before he was briefly held in Belgium, then released. “Belgium ignored our warning that this person is a foreign fighter,” President Recep  Tayyip Erdogan said.

The Brussels attacks came days after a suspected Daesh suicide bomber blew himself up in Istanbul’s most popular shopping district, killing three Israelis and an Iranian.

The Syrian-based extremist group claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attacks, warning of “black days” for those fighting it in Syria and Iraq. Belgian warplanes have joined the coalition in the Middle East, but Brussels has long been a hub of militants who operated elsewhere.

A minute’s silence was observed across Belgium at noon. Prime Minister Charles Michel cancelled a trip to China and reviewed security measures with his inner Cabinet before attending a memorial event at European Commission headquarters with King Philippe, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and French Prime Minister Manuel Valls.

“We are determined, admittedly with a strong feeling of pain in our stomachs, but determined to act,” Michel told a joint news conference with Valls. “France and Belgium are united in pain more than ever.”

Valls played down cross-border sniping over security, saying: “We must turn the page on naivete, a form of carefreeness that our societies have known.

“It is Europe that has been attacked. The response to terrorism must be European.”

EU justice and interior ministers will hold an emergency meeting in Brussels on Thursday, the Dutch EU presidency said.

More than 1,000 people gathered around an improvised shrine with candles and street paintings outside the Brussels bourse.

Belgium’s crisis coordination centre kept the level of security alert at the maximum as the man hunt continued. Some buses and trains were running but the metro and the airport were closed, along with key road tunnels in Brussels.

The blasts fuelled political debate across the globe about how to combat militants.

Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination to succeed Obama in November’s US election, suggested suspects could be tortured to avert such attacks. He also said in a British television interview that Muslims were not doing enough to prevent that kind of violence.

After a tip-off from a taxi driver who unwittingly drove the bombers to the airport, police searched an apartment in the Brussels borough of Schaerbeek late into the night, finding another bomb, a Daesh flag, 15 kg of the same kind of explosives used in the Paris attacks and bomb-making chemicals.

An unused explosive device was also found at the airport.

Closing in

Security experts believed the blasts were probably in preparation before Friday’s arrest of locally based French national Abdeslam, 26, whom prosecutors accuse of a key role in the November 13 Paris attacks.

He was caught and has been speaking to investigators after a shootout at an apartment in the south of the city, after which another Daesh flag and explosives were found.

About 300 Belgians are estimated to have fought with militants in Syria, making the country of 11 million the leading European exporter of foreign fighters and a focus of concern in France and other neighbours over its security capabilities.

Reviving arguments over Belgian security policies following the Paris attacks, in which 130 people died in an operation apparently organised from Brussels, French Finance Minister Michel Sapin spoke of “naiveté” on the part of “certain leaders” in holding back from security crackdowns on Muslim communities.

Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders retorted that each country should look to its own social problems, saying France too had rough high-rise suburbs in which militants had become radicalised. Valls said France had no place teaching Belgium lessons and had problems with its own communities.

Brussels airport seemed likely to remain shut for several days over the busy Easter holiday weekend, since the departure hall was still being combed as a crime scene on Wednesday and repairs can only begin once investigators are finished.

PARIS — Belgium's approach to immigration and security has again come under fire after the Brussels bombings, but some say the country is being unfairly singled out and the timing of the criticism is crass.

Among the more bizarre statements was that of Israeli Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz.

"If in Belgium they continue to eat chocolate, enjoy life and parade as great liberals and democrats while not taking account of the fact that some of the Muslims who are there are organising acts of terror, they will not be able to fight against them," Katz told Israeli radio. 

But it was criticism closer to home that triggered particular outrage, after French Finance Minister Michel Sapin accused Brussels of "naivety" over the spread of extremism in their country. 

"I think there was... a lack of will, on the part of some [Belgian] authorities... perhaps also a kind of naivety," Sapin said on Tuesday, suggesting they "thought that to encourage good integration, communities should be left to develop on their own".

Speaking to French TV station LCI, he added: "We know... that this is not the right answer. When a neighbourhood is in danger of becoming sectarian, we should [implement] a policy of integration."

Belgium has faced much criticism over its security failings, particularly in the wake of November's Paris attacks that were largely planned in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek, considered a hotbed of radicalism.

Some criticisms have been hard to refute, such as revelations from Turkey on Wednesday that Brussels attacker Ibrahim El Bakraoui was detained and deported back to Europe last year. 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Belgian authorities had failed to confirm the suspect's militant links "despite our warnings".

'Solidarity not lectures' 

But the timing of Sapin's comments, just hours after the bombings at the Brussels airport and metro station, was considered highly inappropriate.

"It is indecent when people are suffering, are in shock. We need solidarity, not lectures," said Belgian socialist politician Laurette Onkelinx.

A member of Sapin's own French Socialist Party, Francois Lamy, described the finance minister's statement as "just shameful".

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls also sought to distance himself from his colleague's words, saying he did not want "to lecture our Belgian friends". 

"We closed our eyes, everywhere in Europe and including France, to the rise of extremist Salafist ideas in neighbourhoods where a mix of drug trafficking and radical Islam have led astray... some of the youth," Valls told Europe 1 radio. 

Nonetheless, Belgium has spawned more militants per capita than any other EU country, with some 500 leaving for Syria and Iraq from a population of only 11 million, officials say.

Its political divisions have prevented effective coordination between security services, and have also been blamed for allowing radicalisation to fester. 

A brief moment of elation followed the arrest of Paris suspect Salah Abdeslam last week in Brussels, but that was quickly snuffed out by Tuesday's carnage.

'Could happen anywhere' 

Despite all this, experts have warned against singling out Belgium for criticism. 

"I'd caution against focusing too much on Belgium and blaming them," said Thomas Hegghammer, a terrorism expert at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment.

"This is about networks and where they are strong. Today, it happens to be in Belgium, but a similar situation could be replicated elsewhere," he said.

Hegghammer noted that savvy militants were increasingly skilled at flying under the radar by using encrypted communications — and that this could happen in other countries.

Belgium's ambassador to Britain, Guy Trouveroy, said it was "not entirely right" to suggest some areas of his country had been abandoned by the authorities.

"It is always easy afterwards to say 'We should have, we should have'," Trouveroy told the BBC.

"At the time, the threats were not there and this Syria issue is relatively new. We had to move up to the challenge and we went maybe pace-by-pace, haphazardly. It is not easy.

"These are professionals and they know how to put up commando operations."

Meanwhile, an aide to Sapin told AFP the minister had not wanted to single out Belgium and was talking more generally about the terrorist threat.

The aide said Sapin had sent a message to his Belgian counterpart, Johan Van Overtveldt, apologising for the "controversy".

LESBOS, Greece — More aid agencies helping refugees and migrants arriving in Greece said they were joining a boycott of detention centres on Wednesday, angered at an EU deal they say runs roughshod over human rights.

Human rights organisations reject the pact between the European Union and Turkey to fast-track registration and asylum applications, under which hundreds of new arrivals have been detained since Sunday. Refugees or migrants whose applications fail will be sent back to Turkey.

Aid agencies said cooperating with the Greeks at detention centres would make them complicit with an "unfair and inhumane" practice.

Two aid agencies said on Wednesday they were following the UN refugee agency UNHCR and aid organisation Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF), a major contributor to the relief effort, which both announced on Tuesday they would cut back assistance.

"The IRC alerted the [Greek] coast guard on Monday that we would not transport the world's most vulnerable people to a place where their freedom of movement is impeded upon," said Lucy Carrigan, a regional spokeswoman for the International Rescue Committee (IRC).

The IRC will continue to support those at another makeshift camp, she said.

The Norwegian Refugee Council, a major non-governmental organisation, said it was suspending most of its activities at a detention centre on the Greek island of Chios.

"We are extremely close to be in a position where this site is dangerously overcrowded... We have a large number of refugees including pregnant women and children lying on the concrete floor in the reception hall," said Dan Tyler, a protection adviser for the council.

Tension in the facility was building up and there had already been demonstrations, he told Reuters.

Thousands stranded

Thousands of people have been stranded in Greece since a cascade of border shutdowns in the Balkans started in February.

There are almost 50,000 refugees and migrants stranded in Greece, the vast majority of them not detained in camps since most arrived before the new EU arrangement came into effect on March 20.

Some 12,000 are at Idomeni, a sprawling complex of tents on the Greek border with the Former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia. Since Tuesday, MSF medical personnel have been absent from the camp, citing security reasons after two migrants tried to set themselves on fire.

Migrants living at Idomeni blocked a motorway and a customs checkpoint on Wednesday, demanding that the border be opened.

Greek authorities said they needed help. "We need these international organisations, particularly the UNHCR, which is of great assistance to us. Naturally we want it to stay, under certain rules, of course," Citizen Protection Minister Nikos Toskas told Greek radio.

A government source said migration minister Yannis Mouzalas was trying to coax aid organisations back.

"He is the best placed to mediate with these groups," the source said. Mouzalas, a physician, was extensively involved with aid agencies and participated in relief missions before his Cabinet appointment in Greece's leftist-led government last year.

More than 147,000 people, many fleeing conflict in the Middle East and Asia, have arrived in Greece by sea this year. Almost one million arrived in Europe via Greece in 2015.

BRUSSELS — The Daesh terror group claimed responsibility for suicide bomb attacks on Brussels airport and a rush-hour metro train in the Belgian capital on Tuesday which killed at least 30 people, with police hunting a suspect who fled the air terminal.

Police issued a wanted notice for a young man in a hat who was caught on CCTV pushing a laden luggage trolley at Zaventem Airport alongside two others who, investigators said, had later blown themselves up in the terminal, killing at least 10 people.

Officials said 20 died on the metro train close to European Union institutions. It was unclear what caused the blast but a news agency linked to Daesh said that too was a suicide attack.

The coordinated assault triggered security alerts across Europe and drew global expressions of support, four days after Brussels police had captured the prime surviving suspect in Daesh’s attacks on Paris last November.

Belgian authorities were still checking whether the attacks were linked to the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, according to Federal Prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw, although US officials said the level of organisation involved suggested they had previously been in preparation.

Explosives and a Daesh flag were found after a flat was raided a week ago where a fresh fingerprint of Abdeslam’s had put police on his trail. It was not clear if Abdeslam had been involved at that stage in the airport attack plan. A bomb and a Daesh flag were also found later on Tuesday in a flat in Brussels.

“A photograph of three male suspects was taken at Zaventem. Two of them seem to have committed suicide attacks. The third, wearing a light-coloured jacket and a hat, is actively being sought,” Van Leeuw told a news conference.

A government official said the third suspect had been seen running away from the airport building. Local media said police had found an undetonated suicide vest in the area.

Police issued a wanted notice on Monday, after questioning of Abdeslam, identifying 25-year-old Najim Laachraoui as linked to the Paris attacks. The poor quality of the images left open whether he might be the person caught on the airport cameras.

A witness said he heard shouts in Arabic and shots shortly before two blasts struck in a packed airport departure lounge at the airport.

Belgian media published the security camera picture of three young men pushing laden luggage trolleys. Police later issued the same photograph, showing only one of the three.

“If you recognise this individual or if you have information on this attack, please contact the investigators,” the notice read. “Discretion assured.”

Police operations were under way at several points in the city but a lockdown imposed immediately after the attacks was eased and commuters and students headed home as public transport partially reopened.

Daesh issued a statement claiming responsibility: “We promise the crusader alliance against the Islamic State [Daesh] that they will have black days in return for their aggression against the Islamic State,” the extremist group said.

Belgium, home to the European Union and the headquarters of the NATO military alliance, has sent warplanes to take part in operations against Daesh in the Middle East.

Austrian Horst Pilger, who was awaiting a flight with his family when the attackers struck, said his children had thought fireworks were going off, but he instantly knew an assault was under way.

“My wife and I both thought ‘bomb’. We looked into each other’s eyes,” he told Reuters. “Five or 10 seconds later there was a major, major, major blast in close vicinity. It was massive.”

Pilger, who works at the European Commission, said the whole ceiling collapsed and smoke flooded the building.

Security services found and destroyed a third bomb after two blasts at the airport killed at least 10 people and injured around 100, the provincial governor of Brabant Flanders said. Belgian media gave death tolls as high as 14 at the airport.

The metro station blast killed a further 20 people and injured roughly 130, according to a provisional toll from the national crisis response centre.

‘Black moment’

US President Barack Obama led calls of support to Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel after Brussels had gone into a state of virtual lock-down.

“We must be together regardless of nationality or race or faith in fighting against the scourge of terrorism,” Obama told a news conference in Cuba. “We can and we will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world.”

Michel spoke at a Brussels news conference of a “black moment” for his country. “What we had feared has come to pass.”

The blasts occurred after the arrest in Brussels of a suspected participant the Paris attacks that killed 130 people. Belgian police and combat troops on the streets had been on alert for reprisal, but the attacks took place in crowded areas where people and bags are not searched.

All public transport in Brussels was initially shut down, as it was in London during 2005 Islamist militant attacks that killed 52. Authorities appealed to citizens not to use overloaded telephone networks, extra troops were sent into the city and the Belgian Crisis Centre, clearly wary of a further incident, appealed to the population: “Stay where you are”.

Brussels airport will remain closed on Wednesday, its chief executive Arnaud Feist told reporters.

Public broadcaster VRT said police had found a Kalashnikov assault rifle next to the body of an attacker at the airport. Such weapons have become a trademark of Daesh-inspired attacks in Europe, notably in Belgium and France, including on November 13 in Paris.

Alphonse Youla, 40, who works at the airport, told Reuters he heard a man shouting out in Arabic before the first explosion. “Then the glass ceiling of the airport collapsed.”

“I helped carry out five people dead, their legs destroyed,” he said, his hands covered in blood.

Others said they also heard shooting before the blasts.

A witness said the blasts occurred at a check-in desk.

Video showed devastation in the hall with ceiling tiles and glass scattered across the floor. Bloodied bodies lay around.

Some passengers emerged from the terminal with blood spattered over their clothes. Smoke rose from the building through shattered windows and passengers fled down a slipway, some still hauling their bags.

Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands, all wary of spillover from conflict in Syria, were among states announcing extra security measures. Security was tightened at the Dutch border with Belgium.

The blast hit the train as it left Maelbeek station, close to EU institutions, heading to the city centre.

VRT carried a photograph of a metro carriage at a platform with doors and windows completely blown out, its structure deformed and interior mangled and charred.

A local journalist tweeted a photograph of a person lying covered in blood among smoke outside the station. Ambulances were ferrying the wounded away and sirens rang out across the area.

‘We are at war’

“We are at war and we have been subjected to acts of war in Europe for the last few months,” French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said.

Train services on the cross-channel tunnel from London to Brussels were suspended. Britain advised its citizens to avoid all but essential travel to Brussels.

Security services have been on a high state of alert across western Europe for fear of militant attacks backed by Daesh, which claimed responsibility for the Paris attack.

While most European airports are known for stringent screening procedures of passengers and their baggage, that typically takes place only once passengers have checked in and are heading to the departure gates.

Abdeslam, the prime surviving suspect for the Paris attacks on a stadium, cafes and a concert hall, was captured by Belgian police after a shootout on Friday. Interior Minister, Jan Jambon, said on Monday the country was on high alert for a revenge attack.

AMMAN — A number of Jordan Valley farmers on Tuesday organised a sit-in near Arda vegetable market, protesting against “the deteriorating conditions the agricultural sector is going through”, according to Adnan Khaddam, head of the Jordan Valley Farmers Union.

Sector losses reached around JD3 billion and negatively affected some 3 million citizens who directly depend on agriculture, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, quoted Khaddam as saying.

BRUSSELS — Victims lay in pools of blood, their limbs blown off, as the smoke cleared to reveal a scene of horror after twin explosions ripped through the main terminal at Brussels airport, witnesses told AFP.

The normally bustling departure hall at Zaventem was wrecked by the morning rush-hour blasts, with part of the ceiling collapsing near the check-in desks and many of the huge plate glass windows blown out by the attack.

"A man shouted a few words in Arabic and then I heard a huge blast," airport baggage security officer Alphonse Lyoura, who still had blood on his hands following the explosion, told AFP.

He said there was another explosion about two minutes later.

"I helped at least six or seven wounded people. We took out some bodies that were not moving. It was total panic everywhere," Lyoura said.

"I saw people lying on the ground covered in blood who were not moving.

"At least six or seven people's legs were totally crushed. A lot of people lost limbs. One man had lost both legs and there was a policeman with a totally mangled leg."

Emergency services said at least 11 people were killed in the blast and many others wounded.

The city was already on high alert after the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in the Paris terror attacks in November that were claimed by the Daesh group.

'A terrible mess' 

Jean-Pierre Lebeau, a French passenger who had just arrived from Geneva, told AFP: "We heard the explosion and felt the blast."

He said he had seen many wounded and "blood in the elevator".

"First we were kept together by the police, then they gave us the order to evacuate," he said, recounting the shock on people's faces and a smell seemingly of gunpowder at the scene. 

Michel Mpoy, 65, who was at the airport to pick up a friend coming from Kinshasa, said it was "a total mess — it was terrible".

An employee for the Swissport airport management company described how she looked after a child following the blasts.

"I heard the first explosion and I took a child in my arms and hid him under the counter. Then I gave him to a policeman," the employee said without giving her name.

"There were injured people lying everywhere and some weren't moving."

At the airport, on the northwest outskirts of the city and not far from NATO headquarters, Jean-Pierre Herman said he was relieved to have got out safely.

Herman embraced his wife Tankrat Paui Tran, who he had just gone to collect from the airport after her flight from Thailand. 

"My wife just arrived," Herman said. "I said 'hello,' we took the elevator and in the elevator we heard the first bomb. 

"The second exploded just when we got off. We ran away to an emergency exit. I think we are very lucky."

Charlotte McDonald-Gibson, a British journalist living in Brussels, told AFP there had been "total confusion" at the airport, where she was having breakfast before a flight. 

"Suddenly staff rushed in and said we have to leave," she said. "They rushed out and into the main terminal A departures building. Nobody knew what was going on."

"It was total confusion, people were just standing around wondering what was happening."

Another blast about half an hour after those at the airport hit the Brussels metro between the Maalbeek and Schuman stations in the European Union quarter of Brussels, which is also home to major international organisations and companies.

Around 10 people were killed, emergency services said.

Sirens wailing 

AFP journalist Lachlan Carmichael was on the metro and described how his train was halted in the tunnel and then evacuated as it began to fill up with smoke.

A police officer told him: "There are wounded, there are dead, I do not know how many."

The officer was escorting a woman through a police cordon being put up around the Maalbeek station, with all public transport being closed down.

Another AFP journalist, Cedric Simon, said the situation around the Maalbeek Metro Station was totally confused, with a cloud of smoke and dust settling over the road outside.

Simon said there were about 15 people lying on the roadside, many with bloodied faces and being treated by medical staff as all Brussels hospitals were put on standby to deal with casualties.

The streets were filled with police cars and emergency vehicles, sirens wailing and blue lights flashing.

Brussels has been on high alert since the attacks in Paris in January, with heavily armed police and then troops put on the streets.

Troops were clearly very watchful as they patrolled outside EU and other institutions in the Maalbeek-Schuman area.

BERLIN/PARIS — Twin explosions in the departure hall of Brussels Airport prompted several countries worldwide to review or tighten airport security on Tuesday and raised questions about how soon passengers should be screened when entering terminals.

The Daesh terror group claimed responsibility for bomb attacks on Brussels airport and a rush-hour metro train which killed at least 30 people.

Prosecutors said the blasts at Zaventem airport, which serves more than 23 million passengers a year, were believed to be caused by suicide bombers.

Authorities responded by stepping up the number of police on patrol at airports in London, Paris and Frankfurt and at other transport hubs as Brussels rail services were also halted. Airlines scrambled to divert flights as Brussels airport announced it would close through Wednesday.

In the United States, the country's largest cities were placed on high alert and the National Guard was called in to increase security at New York City's two airports.

The Obama administration was expected to announce new measures to tighten US airport security.

A United Nations agency is already due to review airport security following the downing of a Russian airliner in Egypt by a makeshift soda-can bomb in October last year. Daesh has claimed responsibility for smuggling the bomb on board.

Other recent incidents have also raised questions about how planes are protected. Last month, a bomber brought a device onto an airliner in Somalia and blew a hole in the fuselage. A year ago, a disturbed pilot deliberately crashed a Germanwings airliner killing 150 people, exploiting anti-terrorist cockpit defences to lock himself at the controls.

But there has been less attention focussed on how airports themselves are secured, before passengers check in for flights, despite a number of attacks.

"It strikes me as strange that only half of the airport is secure. Surely the whole airport should be secure, from the minute you arrive in the car park," said Matthew Finn, managing director of independent aviation security consultants Augmentiq.

In 2011, a suicide bomber struck the arrival hall at Moscow's Domodedovo Airport, killing 37 people. In 2013, a shooter killed a US government Transportation Security Administration officer at Los Angeles International Airport. Another gunman killed two there in 2002.

The last major incident at a Western European airport was in 2007, when two people tried to drive a jeep packed with propane canisters into the terminal at Glasgow Airport in Scotland. One of the attackers died.

Several airports afterwards stepped up security for cars, but entrances have largely remained open for those on foot.

Checkpoints

The relative openness of public airport areas in Western Europe contrasts with some in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, where travellers' documents and belongings are checked before they are allowed to enter the airport building.

In Turkey, passengers and bags are screened on entering the terminal and again after check-in. Moscow also checks people at terminal entrances.

"Two terrorists who enter the terminal area with explosive devices, this is undoubtedly a colossal failure," Pini Schiff, the former security chief at Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion Airport and currently the CEO of the Israel Security Association, said in an interview with Israel Radio.

In the Kenyan capital Nairobi, where authorities are on high alert for attacks by Somali-based Al Shabab militants, passengers have to get out of their cars, which are then searched, at a checkpoint a kilometre from the main terminal.

In Nairobi and other airports such as the Philippines capital Manila, passengers also have to present their passports and have bags X-rayed to gain entry to terminal buildings.

"I find that checks in front of buildings, such as those at government buildings in the United States, would be 100 per cent fine," said Ralf Leukers, a passenger at Frankfurt airport.

"If you don't have anything to hide, then you should be happy to have your bags searched."

But such checks could create upheaval at terminals and rely on security staff paying close attention.

"Any movement of the security 'comb' to the public entrance of a terminal building would cause congestion, inconvenience and flight delays, while the inevitable resulting queues would themselves present an attractive target," said Ben Vogel, the editor of IHS Jane's Airport Review.

A group representing Europe's airports said kerbside screening would "be moving the target rather than securing it".

Augmentiq's Finn said governments should make greater use of modern technology that allows for discreet screening of passengers as they pass through gates or revolving doors.

"This is not unique to Brussels; this is a global phenomenon. We have got to effect the right kind of change, otherwise we will be scratching our heads over why the same questions are being posed and not being answered," he said.

But adding pre-terminal screening and other measures at airports would be costly.

"I don't see it happening anytime soon," said Daniel Wagner, CEO of Country Risk Solutions, a security consulting firm in Connecticut in the United States. "There's no sense of urgency and not enough money devoted to the problem."