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Brussels Airport Rocked By Explosions; Report: New Attack in Brussels Subway. Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired March 22, 2016 - 04:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

JOSH ROGIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: So, for the last week or so, and not to mention the fact that I was in Brussels for a forum of international officials, including several U.S. officials, and several U.S. senators who passed through that airport only a day or two before the attack.

[04:30:07] And the mood at that conference, which included the Belgium foreign minister was one of -- was very ominous. Because following the arrests and incidents on Friday night, the Belgian foreign minister warned that there were more planned attacks. He said it very specifically. He said Salah Abdeslam had a network of more than 30 people inside Belgium, many of whom who they had not caught at that time. And that was news when he said that on Sunday.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Right.

ROGIN: And it proved to be eerily accurate because only two days later, those cells seem to be activated.

ROMANS: Josh, let's -- I want to bring everyone up to speed here. So Reuters and the Belgian public broadcaster RTBF are reporting several people were killed in these explosions here at the Brussels airport that happened about an hour and a half ago.

Also, the Belgian broadcaster/Reuters reporting an explosion was heard at the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels, close to the E.U. institutions. That was after there were explosions in that departure hall at -- at Brussels airport. Look, if you're -- and I know we have Nima Elbagir on the phone close to the airport, 520 flights a day out of this airport. About 1.5 million passengers in February.

Nima, we've been talking to Max Foster and to Josh Rogin about just the centrality of this airport and the people coming through there. Just -- just yesterday, Josh Rogin was there. American senators, business people. People who -- diplomats for the European government, a strike at that airport clearly is a strike against Europe, Nima.

NIMA ELBAGIR, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (via telephone): And beyond, you know, just from where we are. We're starting to get close to the airport. What you heard there was the siren of a fire truck. We can see a grounded American airlines flight.

This isn't just about Europe. Brussels is really so central to so many senior officials coming in and out of Europe. That's really now what authorities are having to deal with is, if this threat continues, now with this raising of the terror threat level, what does that do to Brussels' position right at the center?

Brussels is in essence, and has been described for so many decades now, as the capital of Europe. But not just Europe, the NATO headquarters is here. Security, the ability for people to feel safe when they come in here is central to Brussels' functioning. And it plays at the heart of Europe and the heart of the world state really.

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN ANCHOR: If we could just reset where we are, 8:00 a.m. this morning in Brussels, two explosions at the main airport there just outside of the city, reports from the government broadcaster that there was gunfire before those explosions. Words exchanged in Arabic. This is the main departures lounge for the Brussels airport Zaventem.

It is just a few minutes outside the city of Belgium. About an hour and a half later an explosion on a metro near E.U. buildings, Brussels obviously, the capital of Europe, and all of the European union facilities, much like Washington, D.C., are in Brussels, Belgium.

It is a -- if one were to target the west from areas outside, that would be one place to do it. I know you've been trying to make your way to the airport, Nima. Where exactly are you now, and what are you seeing?

ELBAGIR: We are just outside the airport building, Miguel. We can see police cordoning off that first (INAUDIBLE) as you approach the main airport building. But this is as close as we're being allowed to get. There is a real buildup of security services. People that were being moved on their very -- I think the only way to describe it is nervous. We told them we're journalists. They're moving people back past that initial cordon.

We are not, I should stress, right at the departure hall. We are at the initial entry point to the airport and this is where these people are now being held. Traffic, they're trying to move it on. But it's very, very backed up. The priority, of course, is not allow for a buildup of people so close to this area where there has been explosions. The concern is now in securing the cordon and locking this area off and keeping people here safe, because it's not just about the passengers. So many people work here. So many people live near here.

From where we're parked there are houses just across the street. Authorities seem to be in control of the situation.

[04:35:00] They're moving people along trying to establish as secure a cordon as they can here, Miguel.

ROMANS: All right. Nima, thank you for that. We know that you're working your sources.

We know the Belgian broadcaster RTBF citing a hospital source saying up to ten people dead at the airport there. Thirty wounded in those Brussels explosions, two explosions there at the departure lounge of the airport.

I want to bring in CNN's counterterrorism analyst and former CIA counterterrorism official, Philip Mudd.

Philip, you know, we're also hearing this report from Belgian media that there was an explosion at a metro station. We know that they have closed all of the metros in Brussels right now. You're listening to this unfold with us live. The reports of fatalities. All of these witnesses. You can see the pictures of devastation from inside that departure lounge.

Your early thoughts?

PHILIP MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST (via telephone): A couple things you need to think about here. First is how did they miss the people? There will be focus as there should be initially on victims, on -- at the locations for security service.

As the investigation has led to the arrest in Belgium a few days ago you've got to ask where did these people come from? Who was the coordinator? You don't get three simultaneous explosions without central coordination.

So, is that coordinator still out there with other plots? And finally, who's the bomb maker? These are pretty big devices. Who built these kinds of things? Terror organizations have difficulty finding bomb makers with this kind of sophistication, and where did they get the material?

So this is a people hunt immediately. Which is what the security services will do, the police will do at the location.

MARQUEZ: Phil, and so that's the sort of thing that certainly they will be looking at in today and the days ahead. But right now they may have at least two incidents in and around Brussels, Belgium. There may be more afoot. They had arrests over the weekend, major arrests over the weekend, lots of busting down doors and arrests of individuals.

Is that the sort of acts that if there were plots in the planning stage when you have major individuals in those plots, arrested, is that something that would force those plots ahead? And could we be looking at more for Brussels, and possibly across Europe today?

MUDD: I think you're correct. I think what we might see here is the individuals who were around the network that's been broken in Belgium or obviously partly broken the past few days, that is Abdeslam and his co-conspirators. He was the last Paris attacker who was just picked up, might be saying look, the noose is tightening. If we don't go now we're never going to have a chance to go.

I think you should also expect to see the security service pick up more people. Any service in this circumstance is going to say, we're going to talk to anybody even at the periphery of a plot like this because we can't afford to have this happen again. Look for arrests. But the questions about how you miss this number of people, and this

extent of a plot, when you've been focusing on these attackers for four months since Paris is just remarkable.

ROMANS: Since Paris and Abdeslam is apprehended 100 yards from his family home in the Molenbeek neighborhood, it raises a lot of questions about his movements and how he was able to hide in plain sight, phil.

MUDD: It does. I think it also raises questions about cooperation within Europe. Even in the past week there's been a lot of tension between the Belgians and the French about the investigation. There've been questions after Paris about cooperation on how European security services track the movement of people like this. There's a lot of sentiment in Europe that some of that tracking violates civil liberties.

So, the pressure on security services to hunt these people down even in the face of questions about appropriate aggressive security action, there's going to be just tremendous pressure to share information about national across Europe in the coming weeks. I'd expect to see a lot of arrests.

MARQUEZ: You do expect to see a lot of arrests. What is your sense of it? I don't know how much you've been following this. Clearly the Belgium authorities, one doesn't want to be critical of them because they are facing a massive and difficult population to sort of crack into, and to understand.

But at the same time, because of Paris, because of "Charlie Hebdo" before that, because of the clear nexus to Belgium and Brussels, to the number of terrorists coming in from Syria and other areas, as an intelligence officer, how difficult is it to crack in to those, and why don't they have better information and are being more aggressive about going after individuals, and possible cells?

MUDD: I think there's a couple of problems they're facing here.

[04:40:02] Number one is a cultural problem. That is the isolation of some of these communities in places like Paris, where you get large immigrant communities but also in Brussels, means security services are going to be seen as outsiders who are not welcome. They can't move around in the community easily.

And furthermore, community members, forget about terrorism, are going to say whether it's a drug investigation, terror investigation, we don't want to talk to the government. I tell you, the security professional, there are two ways you follow this. That is informants, and technically. In this case, you're not going to get informants because the community doesn't want to cooperate.

I think that's one of the bigger problems or surprises here. How do you penetrate a community to get information on people like this? The second thing we've seen in the investigation here over San Bernardino in the case with Apple, do you have sufficient capability to follow the e-mail, the phone, the electronic trail of individuals like this? When you're dealing with hundreds of investigations for a small

security service, five or ten investigations is a lot. Hundreds means inevitably you're going to fail. That's just too many to follow at once.

ROMANS: All right. Phil Mudd, stick with us here as we continue to get this information in, again, a couple of different media reports of a blast at a Brussels metro station. We do know that the authorities have closed all the metro stations in Brussels. The airport has been closed after these two blasts there around 8:00 -- 8:00 local time, 8:00 a.m. local time.

Jeffrey Edison is a passenger, was a passenger at the Brussels airport when those explosions went off. He was on his way to the gate when this happened. We have him on the phone right now.

We're so glad you're OK. Can you, can you tell us what you heard and saw, Jeffrey? Are you there Jeffrey Edison? Can you hear me Jeffrey?

All right, Jeffrey Edison, we had him on the phone. We'll try to get back to him as soon as we can re-establish communications with him.

He was on his way to his flight. Those flights have all been canceled. There are passengers who have been gathered on the runway. Flights have been diverted. There are about 500 flights a day into this -- into this and out of this airport.

Jeffrey Edison, you're on the phone for us. We know that you are in the airport at the time of these explosions. So glad you're OK.

Can you tell us what you saw and heard, Jeffrey? Are you there, Jeffrey Edison?

JEFFREY EDISON, PASSENGER AT AIRPORT IN BRUSSELS (via telephone): Yes, hello.

ROMANS: Obviously a chaotic situation. The metro stations have been closed --

MARQUEZ: It sounds --

ROMANS: Raised to the highest level -- the airport has been closed --

MARQUEZ: It is an extraordinarily horrible day for Brussels, Belgium, and certainly areas across Europe. The Eurostar train that goes from London into Brussels, and from Paris into Brussels, has now been canceled.

Jeffrey Edison, can you hear us now?

EDISON: Yes, I can hear you. Yes.

MARQUEZ: Can you tell us --

EDISON: The networks are overloaded here.

MARQUEZ: I'm sure they are. I thank you for being patient with us.

Tell us what you saw this morning. Where were you going? What were you doing? What did you see?

EDISON: Yes. Well I was headed to my gate about 8:15 this morning. I'd gone through security, 8:15 local time here. Suddenly, about 200 to 300 people went rushing away from the security checkpoint towards the gates.

Initially no one knew what was going on. It was only 20 to 25 minutes later that we got confirmation from the federal police of the bomb explosions, and the deaths in the main airport building. They had us wait out by the gates for almost a half an hour, then they had us evacuate by foot to the -- to the -- on the airport tarmac, bringing us back towards the main building of the airport, where we could see the damaged windows of the airport -- a lot of military, obviously, police, fire and ambulances arriving on the scene.

ROMANS: Jeffrey, what did the damage look like? We're seeing pictures of those broken windows, ceiling tiles raining down on the main departure hall. What did you see? You didn't hear the blast, am I right?

EDISON: No. I was already out near the gate, which is several hundred yards away from the main building. But it was only when they brought us back towards the main building for the evacuation that we could see the windows that had blown out of the main building. I saw about half a dozen windows from where I was on the -- the access to the train lift and the stairs. Of the main building of the airport.

ROMANS: Jeffrey, what was security like when you went through there? A lot of folks have been remarking that really you can just drive up at the airport, get out at the curb with your bag and walk in and do your business with your tickets, and the security happens after that original point of entry.

[04:45:10] What did you see? What was security like when you first got to the airport this morning?

EDISON: Well, as has been the case for the last two weeks, there were military personnel out in front of the main building. I saw about four wandering around with their heavy arms out in front of the main building, going through the security was very normal morning I would say, traveling out of Brussels, through the security checkpoint.

And it wasn't until about 15 minutes after I went through that we had this movement of panic as several hundred people running away from the security checkpoint. Initially, we were told that it was bomb blasts past the security checkpoint. Later, found that it was probably more in the main building, which is a few hundred yards, a few hundred meters before the security checkpoint.

MARQUEZ: And, Jeffrey, I want to understand, you were past security, and when something happened, did you see people running -- they were on the far side of the security cordon and just pushed through into the terminal for safety? EDISON: No. They were people who were just coming through -- they

had just come through the security and they were running away from the security checkpoint, away from the bomb blast out towards their gate to try to get as far away from the security where the bomb occurred as they could.

MARQUEZ: And where are you now?

EDISON: Now, I've left the airport. I'm on foot at Zaventem Village, just near the airport itself.

MARQUEZ: And what will you do?

EDISON: I'm trying to leave on foot as far away from the airport as I can. Problem is that the metros are also closed with the bomb that occurred at the Maalbeek metro station city.

MARQUEZ: Good luck to you, Jeffrey. Thank you very much for joining us.

EDISON: Jeffrey Edison.

I want to get to Nima Elbagir at the airport for us this morning. We're getting a lot of new information here mostly from the -- from the -- the Belgian public broadcaster BRT says that Brussels airport bomb was a suicide attack. We'll have to look for -- we'll have to look for confirmation from authorities.

Nima, are you there? What can you tell us about those blasts there, and now the ensuing -- the ensuing investigation, and the shut down basically of the transit system in Brussels?

NIMA ELBAGIR, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, the police officers you see behind me, they're part of the emergency plan. There's quite a long queue of them. Police cars, police officers, all on standby.

This is the back side of the airport. This is as close as they're allowing us to get. They've put in place quite a broad security cordon, understandable given all of the confusion, the fear, and really the concerns.

The Eurostar, we were just speaking a little while ago about Brussels' position is really a transport heart in the center of Europe. Now we understand that Eurostar bringing people in from France and the U.K. and around Europe are now canceled. They're increasing security more and more police officers, you can see them behind me, are arriving at the airport.

We don't have confirmation yet as to what caused this. As you said local media are reporting an exchange of gunfire. And they're reporting that this is a bomb blast.

But so far, authorities are being very hesitant, very reluctant to confirm that to us on the record. They are very concerned about the potential for causing broader public alarm, especially in light of those reports of blasts at that train station, at that now shuttered metro station, so close to the European commission building.

MARQUEZ: I want to sort of describe to our viewers the RTBF, the government news agency there, is showing some pictures from the scene of that metro station, showing passengers walking down a darkened subway tracks basically, with some lights. Emergency lights along it, and then getting out of the areas where they can.

As I remember, the subways there aren't like in New York or London where they're just open. You have to go to specific doors sometimes to get out of those subway stations, sort of complicating the situation for people who may be fumbling around in the dark there.

How difficult is it to -- if you were in the tunnels there in the subway station or in the subways, how difficult is it to get out of there?

ELBAGIR: Well, even with the emergency lights, even with the presence of marshals attempting to get people out, it's always going to be very, very scary. And I think this is what we have to remind people, that this is a country that has been dealing with a very high terror alert.

It's been at level three for the last few months. It's now been pushed up to level four. There's a real background of worry and fear and confusion that all of this could be unfolding in the center of Europe.

[04:50:07] And again, we stress we don't have confirmation from authorities as to whether this was a terror attack, but given the warnings that authorities have been issuing for days now, that's going to be in the back of people's minds here. What is this? How quickly is it going to get under control?

And in essence, the establishing of such a broad security cordon here at the network, and in other central locations, part of that is taking back some of that control to reassure people the emergency plan we understand from eyewitnesses inside the airport was initiated very quickly.

Those passengers whose planes had arrived were evacuated onto the runway and held off slightly further back from the departure hall. But nothing can protect people from the devastation that they were witnessing. From the scenes, the pictures that we've been seeing, the video that's been emerging on social media shows broken glass. Eyewitnesses were describing seeing people being stretchered out, and local media reporting a number of fatalities which we're working on confirming, Miguel.

ROMANS: Nima, we know that the metro system has been shut down. We know that the Eurostar trains to Brussels have been canceled. They have been stopped. They will not be coming in.

This is, of course, what the point is of terror, right, to stop business as usual, to stop western governments and western business from -- from operating. I want to be very clear here that in the very early going, it can be

very chaotic when you get these original news reports in. What we do know, two blasts at the departure lounge of the Brussels airport. There have been a lot of other reports about other incidents, another incident in a metro. We are going to verify all of that for you but we do know that the Belgian state media reporting fatalities in that airport.

MARQUEZ: As many as ten people dead at the airport, 30 injured in those blasts at the airport. It sounds like from all reports there were two blasts, possibly gunfire, before those blasts. At 8:00 a.m., that would have been peak travel time and then at 9:30, about an hour and a half later, 9:30 a.m., another blast at a metro station closer to downtown Brussels near the E.U. buildings.

Our Nima Elbagir started her day in Molenbeek, which is farther northeast than the airport, in an area where police and law enforcement officials were concentrating very heavily in trying to what they believe stop another possible attack from occurring.

Nima, you've made your way to the airport. Kind of set up for us where exactly you are. How close have you been able to get? And what sort of activity you're seeing there now?

ELBAGIR: We're just behind the back of the building. So, I can see the tower very clearly from here. We are the back of the runway. This is where the -- this is where police have set up their security cordon. This is as far in as police are allowing any of us to get.

There is a real concern in all of these kind of situations about the potential for not just the chaos, the potential for broader insecurity. So, they're trying to keep people as far back as possible. They've already asked Belgians to stay away from the airport.

Where we are has essentially become the staging ground for police officers queuing to reinforce that situation inside the airport. This is part of the emergency plan that we're witnessing here. There are dozens of police cars and police officers lined up just to the right of us, Miguel.

They're waiting to see if there's a need for any greater reinforcements. But inside the airport, the evacuation plan, the emergency plan is well under way. While they deal with these blasts towards the center of town there, in the train station, and with that threat level that has been pushed up to its very highest.

Now, what that enables authorities here to do is now to deploy the army, and also to ask Belgians, to ask residents to stay off the streets. Which enables them not only to do their sweeps, and to carry out the investigations more freely, but it also takes away that fear, that concern of potential of civilians to be caught up in whatever this turns out to be, Miguel.

ROMANS: Nima Elbagir there at the Brussels airport for us. We'll let you work your sources. Don't go far. I want to go back to London where Max Foster is and we're seeing

reports already, Max, of the Frankfurt airport beefing up security, the Paris airport beefing up security.

This is not a Brussels story. This is a Europe story. This is an international story. Any air traveler this morning is going to see -- feel the reverberations of this event.

MAX FOSTER, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Yes, huge amount of disruption. Brussels is a major European airport. Last year, they had 23.5 million passengers. As Nima's been describing this is the capital of Europe, as they like to call themselves.

[04:55:03] But it's a real center of the politics, and for trade to some extent, as well, within Europe. It's going to have huge knock-on effects. Here in London, the main airport in Europe, Heathrow, they've increased police visibility of the airport. That's a response that naturally comes after these incidents.

And we're going to see all of the security services around Europe coming together, because the big criticism of the Paris attacks is that they weren't liaising properly and responding quickly enough to these sort of circumstances, and since then, I know from sources in London, they've decided to increase the terror security measures much more quickly, even before it's confirmed that these were terror incidents.

MARQUEZ: Local media is reporting that this was a suicide bomber, a BRT, another Belgian media outlet is saying as many as 13 dead and 35 severely wounded at the airport. If there were two blasts, clearly that would mean two bombs. Either two bombers or a bomb and then a secondary suicide bomb with possible gunshots before any of those blasts occurred at the airport at 8:00 a.m. peak travel time and then 9:30 another blast at a -- at a subway downtown Brussels, Belgium.

Max, I want to ask you, London surely is paying attention, as well. They are -- the number of attacks and threats that have been directed against London and other cities across the U.K. are very, very real. What are authorities saying about the situation there? We know that the Eurostar trains have been canceled in to Brussels, at least.

FOSTER: They have. All I know is that I was at a briefing recently. I know that all the senior counterterrorism officers across Europe have been working very, very closely together.

And what you're seeing here is the nightmare scenario. It's another Paris. It's a potentially multiple attacks. We don't know that they're confirmed as that.

But this does play in to the theory that what we would see is an attack on a symbolic target, Brussels is that. And attacking the general public and lifestyle situations and what their focus will be right now is will there be more attacks after this? I think what will be ringing very clearly in everybody's minds right now is that Salah Abdeslam, who was that Paris attacker on the run who was caught on Friday, there was a suggestion that he was planning more attacks. So was this linked to that?

There are so many strands to pull together. But hopefully they're more organized than they were after Paris, and they've learnt their lessons from that.

ROMANS: Max, the Belgian broadcaster BRT as Miguel said as many as 13 people killed Tuesday in those explosions in Brussels, 35 severely injured. The -- the possibility of multiple attacks. So two explosions in the departure lounge, and then potentially this third event at a metro station.

We know the metro stations have been closed. Local media are reporting an explosion at one of the metro stations very close to E.U. institutions. That is the new pattern post -- Paris, right? The one- two punch multiple -- multiple explosions to really cripple a city.

FOSTER: Well, military-style operations like the one in Paris, trained attackers, working together, with a strategy and a plan. We learnt that one of the attackers in Paris actually went along to one of the attacks as it was unfolding. So, could this be another one of those?

Up until Paris, actually they were looking at lone wolf attacks. Sort of thing that we saw in Sydney, with someone who'd been radicalized online, perhaps didn't have any links with terror groups. But now, they're looking at people who have been trained by terror groups like is, and are planning attacks in a coordinated military-style fashion.

That's the new threat. And this does play in to that, although nothing's been confirmed so far because the authorities are still dealing with it and looking for more attacks as they unfold.

MARQUEZ: You do keep up with both the U.K. authorities, and certainly the London had the 7/11 attacks, buses and metro stations in coordinated fashion, some, God, what was that 14, 13, 14 years ago at this point?

They have been very aware of attacks like this. Certainly, "Charlie Hebdo" and the Paris attacks four months ago have put all this on the radar.

What is your sense of the level of coordination? One thing that the Belgian authorities have been criticized on is that the level of coordination has not been as great as they would have liked. Clearly, they were looking for somebody when all of this began to unfold this morning.

What is your sense from that part of it? I know that the police there have always been very active across Europe.

FOSTER: Yes, well they say they are working to the a lot more effectively than they were just a few months ago. But the problem with these situations as always, to what level can you share security information?