(AFP) “Aline, Patricia, Leopold, Gilles, Johanna, Loubna …” Five years on, the 32 victims of the Brussels bomb attacks were the focus of Monday’s national day of commemoration.
The March 22, 2016, bombings were the worst massacre in the country’s modern peacetime history and triggered a huge operation to locate and detain Islamist extremists.
But on the anniversary thoughts turned to the dead and wounded and to the lives of the families torn apart by bombings that hit city centre metro commuters and travellers at Brussels’ international airport.
Clad in black, Philippe, king of the Belgians, and Queen Mathilde paid their respects in front of a fresco in memory of the victims at the Maelbeek metro station, where 16 people died, after hearing the reading of their names.
