Belgian police have arrested a total of five people in a string of raids across Brussels in connection with last month's attacks in Paris, prosecutors said Monday, reports FRANCE 24.
Police arrested two brothers and a third person in a house raid in the centre of the Belgian capital Brussels on Sunday, while two others were detained in a separate search in a suburb on Monday, the federal prosecutor's office said in a statement.
The raids were conducted after police had analysed telephone data. No arms, nor explosives, were found in the searches, however, Reuters news agency reported.
Earlier Monday, Eric Van Der Sypt, a spokesman for the federal prosecutor, had said that fugitive Salah Abdeslam, who is one of Europe's most wanted men over his alleged involvement in the November 13th attacks that left 130 dead in Paris, was not among the people arrested over the weekend.
It was not immediately clear whether he had been apprehended in connection with Monday’s arrests, however.
Sunday's search took place in a building on the outer limits of Molenbeek - an area with a large immigrant population - and less than a kilometre away from Brussels' central Grand Place square, one of the city's most popular tourist sites.
Pedestrians were evacuated as the raid took place, from 6pm to 11pm local time (1700-2200 GMT).
Twenty-six-year-old, Brussels-born Abdeslam, suspected of having played a key role in the Paris attacks, is understood to have returned to the Belgian capital the day after the bloodshed.
An international arrest warrant is out on Abdeslam, who lived in Molenbeek.
A source close to the Belgian investigation told AFP on Sunday that Abdeslam made it past three police checks when friends drove him from Paris to Brussels in the hours after the coordinated gun and suicide attacks.