Source: The Associated Press, April 2, 2016
Departure hall was destroyed and 16 died in attack by suicide bombers
Struck by suicide bombers last month, the Brussels airport known as “the heart of Europe” will reopen to a limited number of passenger flights on Sunday, CEO Arnaud Feist has said.
He made the announcement Saturday at a news conference at a hotel near the airport. Feist said the first service on Sunday should be three flights operated by Brussels Airlines, Belgium’s leading carrier, to Faro in Portugal, Turin in Italy and Athens.
The airport has been closed since the March 22 suicide bombings that killed 16 people at the airport and another 16 in the Brussels subway. Another 270 people were wounded.
The suicide bombers who died at the airport were named as Najim Laachraoui and Ibrahim el-Bakraoui. Bakraoui’s brother, Khalid el-Bakraoui, blew himself up on a city subway train.
Feist said the country has just lived through “the darkest days in the history of aviation in Belgium,” but he called it “a sign of hope” that service will be restored so quickly after the devastating bombings, claimed by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
The airport, which usually handled about 600 flights a day, served about 1.5 million people in February, the month preceding the attack.