LIVE BLOG: Bomb attacks in Brussels

"The airport will remain closed through Wednesday," the airport's chief executive Arnaud Feist was quoted as saying on Tuesday on the Zaventem airport's official twitter feed.

The statement, written in French and Arabic, vows to inflict upon the "crusader states against the Islamic State" more "dark days", and praises the attackers for their precision in choosing locations at the heart of Brussels.

According to Rabbi Pinchas Kornfeld, a community leader from Antwerp, the explosions that rocked Zaventem airport occurred at the "right time and place to produce many Jewish casualties".

Many Jewish passengers were travelling between Antwerp, which has a large haredi Orthodox community, and New York.

Out of respect for the victims and their loved ones, several Jewish organisations cancelled their Purim holiday parties that were set for tomorrow in Antwerp and Brussels.

In a joint statement, the leaders of the EU said they "stand firm with Belgium in solidarity and are determined to face this threat together with all necessary means."

"This latest attack only strengthens our resolve to defend the European values and tolerance from the attacks of the intolerant. We will be united and firm in the fight against hatred, violent extremism and terrorism."

"The European Union mourns the victims of today's terrorist attacks in Brussels. It was an attack on our open democratic society. "

The Belgiam Crisis Centre tweeted out that public transport is no longer under lockdown, and that it was safe enough for parents to collect their children from school.

Many victims of the Maalbeek bomb were rushed to the city’s St-Pierre hospital – where a key IS suspect Salah Abdeslam was treated at the weekend after a dramatic police raid. 

"It’s a horrible thought," Luc Martin, a 52-year-old father of three who had just visited a family member inside the St-Pierre hospital, told Middle East Eye. 

"Numerous ambulances have been pulling up outside the emergency ward since first thing this morning. They are doing everything they can to save people."

"We were talking about Abdeslam last night – it seems incredible that he was being looked after by the same people," he added. 

Islamic State has reportedly claimed responsibility for the attack in Brussels today, in a statement released through the IS-affiliated Amaq News agency.

Belgian media has released images that appear to show three men suspected of carrying ou the attacks at the airport in Brussels on Tuesday:

Images of Belgium's most famous cartoon character Tintin crying over today's attacks have gone viral with tens of thousands of people sharing the image in just a few hours. 

Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has said that waterboarding would "fine" in interrogating Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam.

"Frankly, waterboarding, if it was up to me and we changed the laws, waterboarding would be fine," he told the American TODAY programme.

"We work within laws and they don't work within in laws."

A Syrian government foreign ministery spokesperson said Tuesday the attacks in Brussels were the "inevitable result of wrong policies and a tolerance for terrorism,.

He was quoted by state news agency SANA as saying the attacks were the consequence of some countries "describing terrorist groups as moderate."

"Syria, which has confronted takfiri terrorism for five years renews its call to combine all sincere international efforts to confront the danger of terrorism."

Simon Jenkins, writing in the Guardian, warned that the attacks in Brussels should not provoked a knee-jerk response from the security services:

"The blanket media coverage assured for any act of violence is reckless. The media must “report”, but it need not go berserk in revelling in the violence caused, as it manifestly has done to Islamic State brutality. More serious, the intention of the terrorist is clearly to shut down western society, to show liberal democracy to be a sham and to invoke the persecution of Muslims. Yet that is the invariable response of the security industry to these incidents. Convinced of its potency, it dare not admit there are some things against which it cannot protect us. So when incidents occur it jerks the knee and demands ever more money and ever more power. It must not be given them."