Victims of the Brussels attacks

Most of the people killed in last Tuesday’s terror attacks in Brussels have now been identified.

Thirty-five people were killed in the three bomb attacks at Brussels airport and Maelbeek metro station and many more were injured.

The casualties came from a wide variety of countries including, Belgium, Colombia, Ecuador, France, Germany, Britain, Hungary, Portugal, Romania, Spain and the US.

Police say the task of identifying the dead in the attacks has been slowed down by the violence of the explosions and because there were so many foreigners.

The number of victims thought to have died in the attack has fluctuated. On 28 March the Belgian authorities revised the figure up to 38, including the three suicide attackers, after news that four of the injured had died in hospital.

Twenty-eight have now been identified, officials said. The latest four people to have died have not yet been named.

A page has been set up on the collaborative website Trello to identify those killed, missing and injured. A Facebook page has also been set up.

Adelma Tapia Ruiz

The first fatality to be confirmed was that of 37-year-old Peruvian Adelma Tapia Ruiz. Ms Tapia was killed at the airport, where she was with her Belgian husband, Christophe Delcambe, and their twin four-year-old daughters Maureen and Alondra, who all survived.

Ms Tapia’s brother, Fernando Tapia Coral, said in an interview that Mr Delcambe followed his daughters outside the gate area shortly before the explosion and could not find his wife after the blast.

Mr Delcambe was reportedly injured while Maureen had shrapnel wounds in one arm. Alondra was not injured, reports said.

Writing on Facebook, Mr Tapia called his sister’s death “incomprehensible”.

“It is very complicated to describe this pain that we are feeling at home, but as the older brother, I know I have to try.

“It is more difficult still to understand the way that destiny has snatched the life of a loved one, but even more incomprehensible is not being able to be close to her in this family tragedy that today knocked on the doors of my family. Early this morning in the Brussels airport, my sister Adelma Tapia died in the terrorist attack, unable to survive this jihadist attack that we’ll never understand.”

He said his sister was due to catch a flight to New York where she was meeting their sisters, and had planned to return to Peru this year before setting up a Peruvian restaurant in Brussels.

Leopold Hecht

Leopold Hecht, a Belgian national aged 20, studied law at the Universite Saint-Louis in Brussels. He was killed in the attack on Maelbeek metro in which 19 others died.

His family has decided to donate his organs.

“We know it’s the decision he would have wanted us to take,” the family told La Libre Belgique newspaper.

“There are no words to describe our distress,” university rector Pierre Jadoul told the AFP news agency.

Naji Masri, a student in the same year as Mr Hecht at the university, told AFP: “He was a good student, always in the front row.”

David Dixon

On Friday, British national David Dixon, 50, was confirmed to have died in the metro blast.

A computer programmer from Nottingham, he had texted his aunt saying he was safe after the two airport blasts, but was then caught up in the metro attack.

His family said they had received “the most terrible and devastating news about our beloved David”.

British Prime Minister David Cameron tweeted: “I am deeply saddened to hear David Dixon was killed in the Brussels attacks. My thoughts and prayers are with his friends and family.”

Louba Lafquiri

Ms Lafquiri, 34, described as a Belgian-Moroccan mother of three, was a physical education teacher at La Vertu Islamic school in Brussels. She took the metro to work every morning but on the day of the attacks she never arrived.

Her death at Maelbeek metro station was announced by her family several days after the bombing. Colleagues at the school described her as a popular and energetic teacher.

Andre Adam

Mr Adam, a 79-year-old retired diplomat, was killed at Brussels airport. His wife, Danielle Adam, survived the attack. Andre Adam served as Belgium’s ambassador to the US in the 1990s. He had also held diplomatic posts in the UK, Cuba, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Algeria. He finished his career as Belgian permanent representative at the United Nations.

On Facebook, Gigi Adam said her father died “protecting our mother”. The couple lived in south-west France, in the town of Larresingle. They were on their way to Miami when they were caught up in the attack.

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Alexander and Sascha Pinczowski

The Dutch brother and sister were killed in the airport attack, officials say. Residents of the US, they were on their way to New York. They had hoped to become US citizens, the Washington Post reports.

Elita Weah

The 41-year-old, also from the Netherlands, died at the airport. She was on her her way to New York for the funeral of her father-in-law.

Olivier Delespesse

Mr Delespesse, a Belgian civil servant who worked for the Federation Wallonie-Bruxelles, was killed in the metro bombing, his employer said.

Patricia Rizzo

The European Research Council employee was among the victims of the metro bombing, Italy’s foreign ministry said. She was born in Belgium, but her family is originally from Sicily. She is survived by a son and her parents.

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Jennifer Scintu Waetzmann

A coach for a youth handball club in Germany, Jennifer Waetzmann was travelling to New York with her husband for a belated honeymoon when the airport attack occurred, her uncle told the German newspaper Bild. She was killed in the blast, while her husband, Lars Waetzmann, was injured.

Justin and Stephanie Shults

Originally reported missing, Justin and Stephanie Shults were confirmed on Saturday to have died in the airport bombings. Stephanie Shults’ employer, Mars,said on Facebook that her family had confirmed their deaths. Justin was from the US state of Tennessee and Stephanie was from Kentucky. The couple had studied together at Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management.

They had accompanied Stephanie’s mother to the airport and were watching her go through security checks when the explosions occurred, a family member said.

Bart Migom

The 21-year-old Belgian student was travelling to the United States to visit his girlfriend in the state of Georgia. His family said “he died immediately” when bombs went off at the airport, his university in Bruges told AFP. His girlfriend, Emily Eisenman, also 21, said the last she heard from him was a text message sent from a train on the way to the airport.

Frank Deng

The 24-year-old Chinese national was killed at the airport while waiting for a flight to Ljubljana, a friend reported on Facebook, citing the Chinese embassy in Brussels. Chinese officials had earlier said a man identified only as Mr Deng had been killed in the attacks.

Fabienne Vansteenkiste

The 51-year-old Belgian woman was a baggage handler at Zaventem airport, who had just finished her shift when the two bombs exploded. Media reports said she was a grandmother of two young children. Her relatives have confirmed her death.

Lauriane Visart

The 27-year-old Belgian woman was in the metro at the time of the bombing. She was the daughter of Michel Visart, a journalist with public broadcaster RTBF.

Her father said: “Lauriane had values that were extremely strong, which she defended with great passion, such values as fairness, justice, tolerance and gender equality”.

Sabrina Fazal

A 24-year-old nursing student, killed in the Maelbeek metro bombing. Boyfriend Jonathan Selemani confirmed her death five days after the attacks. Mr Selemani said she was proud of her Congolese roots and was a loving mother to their one-year-old son. He said the couple had planned to marry.

It was reported that she had once been a correspondent for a website for members of the Congolese diaspora.

Nic Coopman

The 49-year-old was described as a controls specialist who worked on electrical and automation projects for the Kansas-based company Wenger manufacturing in their Belgian office.

Colleagues said he was waiting for a flight to Zurich at the time of the airport bombings.

Other reported fatalities or people missing:

• Raghavendra Ganeshan, an IT worker from India, has not been heard of since the attacks
• Gilles Laurent, nationality unknown, listed on Twitter as missing
• Polish woman Janina Panasewicz, reported to be missing after the metro blast
• Belgian woman Aline Bastin, reported to be missing after the metro bombing
• Dinko Malnar, Croatian, in transit between Montreal and Zagreb
• Berit Viktorsson, Johanna Atlegrim, Adeoba Moyo, Yves Cibuabua, Tito Garcia Ramone, and a man named only as Gevaert, nationalities unknown, all reported to be missing

 

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The wounded

Scores of people were wounded in the attacks including a woman photographed while sitting bloodied and dazed with a leg stretched across a seat at Brussels’s Zaventem airport moments after the suicide bomb attack on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, the woman, whose photograph has become the most haunting image of the attacks, was identified as an airline worker from India. Her family in the city of Mumbai have named her as Nidhi Chaphekar, a 40-year-old Jet Airways flight attendant and a mother of two.

Her family say that after an internet search they have now discovered that she is alive and recovering in hospital. Jet Airways say that Amit Motwani, another employee hurt in the airport blasts is also recovering.

Sebastien Bellin, a Brazilian-born father of two and basketball player with the Belgian national team, is among the wounded. He was pictured lying on the airport floor with blood pooled around his leg.

The blast threw him 2m (6ft) into the air and left shrapnel in his left leg and right hip, his father, Jean Bellin, said.

Four Mormon missionaries were also injured by a blast at the airport, their church said, three seriously. One, Mason Wells, 19, was reportedly only one block away from the Boston bombing in 2013, and was in Paris during the gun and bomb attacks there in November.

Two other missionaries, Richard Norby, 66, and Joseph Empey, 20, from Utah were seriously injured, officials from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints said. A fourth, Fanny Clain, suffered minor injuries.

Mr Wells’ father, Chad Wells, said he woke up to see the news on TV, before calling the church’s mission president in France and finding out his son was injured but alive.

“I’m completely shocked by the news. It’s the kind of thing as a parent you never, ever want to wake up to,” he said.

“Hopefully he’s run his lifelong odds and we’re done. I think it will make him a stronger person … Maybe the Boston experience was there to help him get through this experience.”

[Source:- BBC news]