Brussels police detain two in raids linked to Paris attacks

Belgian authorities continued their ongoing probe into homegrown terrorist cells in connection with last month’s attack in Paris, as they searched a house in the troubled Molenbeek neighborhood of Brussels on Sunday.

Authorities today searched another house in Laeken, also in Brussels, according to the Belgian federal prosecutor’s statement, where two people were arrested.

Police said no guns or explosives were discovered during the raids, and did not identify those detained.

Prosecutors say the five, including two brothers, were detained after searches related to the Paris attacks. Two brothers found there were taken in for questioning, as well as a friend.

After a “thorough interrogation” by federal judicial police, the investigating judge ordered the release of all five, the prosecutor’s office said.

Confirming a report in the French daily Le Parisien, the source quoted Hamza Attou, suspected along with Mohammed Amri of driving Abdeslam to Brussels the day after the coordinated November 13 attacks in which 130 people died. Police officials evacuated pedestrians in the vicinity during the raid Sunday, which began at 6 p.m. local time (12 p.m. EST).

An global arrest warrant is out on Abdeslam, who lived in Molenbeek.

Abdeslam made it past three police checks as friends drove him from Paris to Brussels after the attacks, Al Jazeera reported.

Following the attacks in Paris the focus of theinvestigation turned to Belgium where several people suspectedof having aided the attackers have been arrested.

Abaaoud, who investigators believe was the alleged ringleader of the Paris slaughter claimed by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, was planning to target Charles de Gaulle airport when he was killed.