Mourad Laachraoui, Belgian Taekwondo athlete and brother of Najim Laachaoui, implicated in the Brussels bombing attacks, addresses a press conference in Brussels, Belgium, March 24, 2016. REUTERS/Christian Hartmann 
 
 A man, who police said is named Najim Laachraoui is seen in this undated photo issued by the Belgian Federal police on their Twitter site, on suspicion of involvement in the Brussels airport attack, on March 23, 2016. REUTERS/Belgian Federal Police/Handout via Reuters 
 
 BRUSSELS Brussels suicide bomber Najim Laachraoui was a nice, intelligent boy, his brother said on Thursday, and gave no warning signs of being radicalised before he left for Syria in 2013 and broke all contact with his family. 
 
 Laachraoui, a 25-year-old Belgian, was one of Tuesday's suicide bombers, security sources have told local media. A veteran Islamist fighter in Syria, he is also suspected of making explosive belts for last November's Paris attacks. 
 
 No one in the family saw any change in his attitude before the day he called them to say he had left for Syria, his 20-year-old brother Mourad said. They also have no clue as to what could have led him to be radicalised, he said. 
 
 "He was a nice boy, and above all he was clever, that's what I remember of him," Mourad said of his brother, who graduated in electromechanics. The last time he saw Najim, he told a news conference, he looked "normal." 
 
 The family warned the police in 2013 when Najim told them he was in Syria, Mourad said. The police visited them at the time and came back to search their home after the November 2015 Paris attacks. 
 
 Mourad, who said he was deeply saddened by the November attacks, said he never saw his brother with their suspected mastermind Abdelhamid Abaaoud, another Belgian, or anyone else involved in the Paris or Brussels carnage. 
 
 Najim was religious, as is the family, Mourad said, adding that he would do everything possible to make sure his three younger siblings still at school do not become radical. 
 
 Mourad is a taekwondo athlete who has represented Belgium in European and world competitions, Belgium's ABFT taekwondo federation said on its website. 
 
 "It's crazy, really - the same parents, the same upbringing, and one turns out really well and the other really bad," his lawyer Philippe Culot said. "Mourad and his whole family are crushed that Najim could have committed such a barbaric act." 
 
 "You don't choose your family," Mourad remarked. 
 
 Authorities have not officially said that Najim is dead and his family has had no confirmation either, Mourad told journalists. 
 
 "VERY GOOD STUDENT" 
 
 Najim Laachraoui was a model student in a Brussels Catholic high school, its director told Reuters earlier on Thursday. 
 
 "Najim Laachraoui was a very good student," said Veronica Pellegrini, the director of the Institut de la Sainte Famille d'Helmet, a Catholic school in the ethnically mixed east Brussels borough of Schaerbeek. 
 
 "He never failed a class," Pellegrini said of Laachraoui, who studied at the school for six years, until graduating in 2009. "We haven't heard from him since," she said. 
 
 Traveling under the false name Soufiane Kayal, Laachraoui was documented driving from Hungary into Austria in September in a car driven by Salah Abdeslam, the prime suspect in the Paris attacks who was arrested in Brussels last week. 
 
 There is speculation Laachraoui had just returned from Syria, possibly by sea with refugees. 
 
 Catholic religion classes are part of the school's curriculum for all students regardless of their religion and Laachraoui would have attended those classes as any other student, Pellegrini said. 
 
 It is not uncommon for Muslim pupils in Belgium to go to Catholic schools, which can be seen as more conservative or more exclusive than state schools. 
 
 (Reporting by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Tom Heneghan) ||||| Play Facebook 
 
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 BRUSSELS — One of the suicide bombers who blew themselves up at Brussels airport was the suspected bomb-maker involved in November's Paris attacks, Belgian officials announced on Friday. 
 
 The federal prosecutor confirmed that 24-year-old Najim Laachraoui was the bomber pictured on the left of a surveillance camera image captured before the twin blasts rocked the departures area on Tuesday. He was pushing a luggage trolley that contained a bomb hidden in a suitcase. 
 
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 Laachraoui is suspected of being the bomb-maker who supplied devices for the Paris attacks on Nov. 13. 
 
 The prosecutor also confirmed Friday that Laachraoui's DNA was found on a suicide belt at the Bataclan music venue that was targeted by the terrorists along with an explosive device at the Stade de France. 
 
 Najim Laachraoui (left) is seen in footage from a security camera at Brussels airport on Tuesday. Belgian Police 
 
 His DNA was also recovered at several safe houses in Belgium used by the cell. 
 
 Laachraoui also used the false name Soufiane Kayal and was with suspected Paris attacker Salah Abdeslam in Hungary in Sept. 2015, according to the prosecutor. 
 
 U.S. and Belgian intelligence sources previously told NBC News that Laachraoui was believed to be among the Brussels suicide bombers, but Friday was the first time his involvement in the attacks had been publicly acknowledged by officials. ||||| Ibrahim and Khalid el-Bakraoui blew themselves up at airport and metro respectively, prosecutors confirm, as police hunt surviving suspect 
 
 Two of the suicide bombers who blew themselves up in the twin Brussels attacks that killed at least 31 people on Tuesday have been formally named by prosecutors, as police searched for a suspect captured on CCTV at Zaventem airport. 
 
 The Belgian federal prosecutor, Frédéric van Leeuw, confirmed media reports that Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, 29, detonated one of two devices that exploded at Zaventem airport, killing himself and 11 others and injuring more than 90. 
 
 
 
 His younger brother Khalid, 27, was responsible for a third explosion, just over an hour later in a metro carriage at Maelbeek station on the rue de la Loi, near offices of the European commission, van Leeuw told a news conference. At least 14 people died in that attack, with more than 130 wounded. 
 
 Brussels attacks: el-Bakraoui brothers 'named as suicide bombers' – live Read more 
 
 Van Leeuw said the two airport bombs exploded within seconds of each other at 7.58am, near the check-in desks of rows 11 and two in the main departure hall. Ibrahim el-Bakraoui was identified by his fingerprints. 
 
 But two others from a group of three men caught on a CCTV camera wheeling loaded baggage trolleys across the hall have not been identified. One of these men was the second airport suicide bomber, the other a suspect who survived after leaving behind a suitcase containing a “very large explosive charge” and who is being actively sought. 
 
 Belgian media have suggested the surviving attacker was Najim Laachraoui, but reports that he had been arrested were later retracted. 
 
 Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks, which plunged the Belgian capital into a day-long lockdown, led to heightened security at airports across Europe, and drew swift and strong condemnation from other European capitals, the US and Russia. 
 
 
 
 Shortly after Brussels residents, EU staff including the president of the European commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, and members of the Belgian royal family observed a minute’s silence in memory of the dead, van Leeuw confirmed the death toll from the attacks stood at 31 but was likely to rise further, with 270 injured. 
 
 Timeline of the Brussels attacks Read more 
 
 A taxi driver had come forward after recognising CCTV images of the three airport suspects as men he picked up from an apartment block and dropped off at the airport, van Leeuw said, adding that police had subsequently raided the building in the Brussels district of Schaerbeek and discovered 15kg of explosives, detonators and a suitcase filled with nails and screws. 
 
 A series of other raids in the same street had led to one arrest, the prosecutor added, and the discovery in a rubbish bin of a computer containing a statement from Ibrahim el-Bakraoui in which he wrote of feeling “in a rush, not knowing what to do, being hunted everywhere, not being safe, and if this goes on, ending up in a cell”. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Soldiers stand guard at the entrance of Brussels’ central station on Wednesday. Photograph: Aurore Belot/AFP/Getty Images 
 
 Van Leeuw said the two el-Bakraoui brothers, both Belgian nationals, had long criminal records but had not so far been associated with terrorism. It has emerged since the bloody attacks in Paris last November that killed 130 people, however, that they were part of that terror cell. 
 
 One el-Bakraoui brother is known to have rented a flat in the Forest area of south-west Brussels that was raided by police last Tuesday, leading three days later to the capture of Salah Abdeslam, the only known survivor among the 10 Islamist gunmen and suicide bombers who attacked the Bataclan concert hall, Stade de France and a string of cafes and restaurants in Paris. 
 
 One of the brothers is also known to have rented a hideout in Charleroi in Belgium where two more of the Paris attackers, ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud and Bilal Hadfi, who blew himself up at the Stade de France, met before heading to the French capital. 
 
 One of the el-Bakraoui brothers is also believed to have provided ammunition and weapons for the Paris attacks, RTBF reported. 
 
 Laachraoui, 24, is also suspected of involvement in the Paris attacks. He reportedly travelled to Syria in 2013 and was previously identified by his alias, Soufiane Kayal. He was travelling with Abdeslam in September 2015 when their car was stopped at the Hungarian border with Austria. Also in the car was Mohammed Belkaid, who was shot dead by a police sniper in a Forest raid. 
 
 Laachraoui’s DNA was also found at another apartment used by the Paris attackers in Auvelais. near the central Belgian city of Namur, and at another suspected hideout in Schaerbeek. RTBF said he could have been one of the bombmakers involved in the Paris attacks. 
 
 Belgium raised its terror alert to its highest level in the aftermath of the attacks. The airport will remain closed on Wednesday and Thursday and the metro will be running a reduced service, but schools were opening as normal. 
 
 The French prime minister, Manuel Valls, who was travelling to Brussels on Wednesday, urged the EU parliament to authorise a full Europe-wide passenger name record. “It has waited too long to adopt this text,” he said. “It must examine and adopt it in April. It’s time.” 
 
 The suspects 
 
 
 
 Ibrahim el-Bakraoui 
 
 El-Bakraoui blew himself up at Brussels’ main airport. He and his brother, Khalid, were well known to Belgian police because of their long history of involvement in organised crime. They had clear links to the Paris attacks and were among the suspects on the run. 
 
 
 
 Unidentified suspect 
 
 The second bomber at the airport. 
 
 Khalid el-Bakraoui 
 
 Khalid el-Bakroui was responsible for the explosion in the metro carriage at Maelbeek station on the rue de la Loi, which killed at least 14 people and injured more than 130. Like his brother Ibrahim, the airport bomber, he had a criminal history and links to the Paris attacks. He had rented the flat in Forest, south-west Brussels, that was raided by police last Tuesday and where DNA traces of Salah Abdeslam, the surviving Paris attacker, had been found. 
 
 Najim Laachraoui 
 
 Laachraoui was identified as a key suspect in the Paris attacks the day before the Brussels bombings. His DNA was found in two hideouts used by Paris attackers and also on explosive material, prosecutors have said. Laachraoui was travelling under an alias with Salah Abdeslam in September last year when their Mercedes was stopped at the Hungarian border with Austria. RTBF reported that he could have been one of the bombmakers in the Paris attacks. 
 
 Haroon Siddique
– One of the two suicide bombers that killed at least 30 people at the Brussels airport Tuesday was the same man who made two of the bombs used in the terrorist attacks on Paris in November, authorities confirmed Friday. The New York Times identified the man as 24-year-old Belgian citizen Najim Laachraoui. Laachraoui's DNA was found on a suicide belt at the Bataclan music venue and an explosive device at the Stade du France following the Paris attacks, NBC News reports. Authorities asked for help finding him on Monday, three days after they arrested Paris attacker and suspected accomplice Salah Abdeslam. On Tuesday, Laachraoui used a bomb hidden in a suitcase to blow himself up at the Brussels airport. Laachraoui left Belgium for Syria in 2013, Reuters reports. His family says it saw no sign of radicalization beforehand and has no idea what happened. Laachraoui's family warned police after he left for Syria. His brother, 20-year-old Mourad, remembers his brother as "nice" and "clever." "Mourad and his whole family are crushed that Najim could have committed such a barbaric act," Reuters quotes Mourad's lawyer as saying. Mourad, who represents Belgium in international taekwondo competitions, says he will do whatever it takes to keep his three younger siblings from following his brother's path.