GETTY A string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station on Tuesday

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Scores have been killed and wounded after explosions tore through Brussels airport and a metro station in the centre of the city. News agency AMAQ, which is affiliated with the terror group, said on Tuesday afternoon ISIS fighters "carried out a series of bombings with explosive belts and devices on Tuesday, targeting an airport and a central metro station in the center of the Belgian capital Brussels". Security experts and a leading European government minister had earlier suggested ISIS are to blame for the Brussels atrocity. Today’s multiple blasts come just days after the arrest of Salah Abdeslam in the Molenbeek district of the Belgian capital. Experts are now warning that today’s terror attacks could be a revenge strike after the suspected Paris massacre mastermind was detained in a dramatic police raid in which he was shot in the leg.

Spanish Foreign Secretary José Manuel García Margallo immediately laid the blame with ISIS - also known by its Arabic acronym Daesh. He said: "Let's stop pretending, let's worry about Daesh, which is the enemy.” Describing the group as a “terrorist cancer”, he said: "We must be aware that as they are hit in Syria and Iraq, they are going to go elsewhere. “They have sleeper cells all over the world and Belgium has a very serious problem.”

Brussels terrorist attacks Wed, March 22, 2017 The Brussels airport and Metro bombings in pictures, including the aftermath of the tragic scenes. Play slideshow AFP/Getty Images 1 of 61 A member of the civil protection holds his face in his hands as he come back from the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels

Abdeslam, who is thought to be responsible for planning the French attacks, is currently being questioned by Belgian security services. Raffaello Pantucci, an international security expert for the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), said his arrest may have prompted his terror network to launch today's attacks fearing their plans would be revealed during his interrogation. The director of International Security Studies at RUSI said: "The reality is we have got a situation where there is a very large network of people in Belgium and France.

"When Abdeslam gets arrested, you will have the network around him all starting to panic. "If you have problems building up, or people thinking about doing stuff, they might accelerate any planned attacks. "If you have something you are thinking of doing, you will speed it up. Whereas before, you might have waited.

When Abdeslam gets arrested, you will have the network around him all starting to panic Raffaello Pantucci

"You are concerned about what might get exposed and the last thing you want to do is get captured. "It wouldn't surprise me if it was part of that network but we cannot know for sure."

Dr Natasha Underhill, an expert on terrorism in the Middle East at Nottingham Trent University, earlier said: “The attacks in Brussels have yet to be claimed by any group but there is little doubt that they are linked to affiliates of the Islamic State organisation. “It should, in some ways, have come as no surprise that there would have been some reaction from the group in response to the capture of Salah Abdeslam. “This was no doubt a warning strike to European leaders and there may be more to come. “The group has time and time again issued statements that it will have no mercy in targeting those who are supporting the US and who are fighting against the group. “The likelihood of further attacks in Europe is now in very little doubt.”

GETTY Policemen stand guard near a security perimeter set in the Rue de la Loi near Maalbeek station

Belgium's federal prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw has confirmed one of the explosions at Brussels Airport was likely to have been caused by a suicide bomber, without naming who might be responsible. He also stopped short of revealing whether a suicide bomber was behind the second blast at the airport or the metro station explosion. A number of Twitter users purporting to be supporters of ISIS took to the social network to sickeningly celebrate the tragic attacks. One wrote: “The state will force you to reevaluate your ways a thousand times before you are emboldened to kill Muslims again, and know that Muslims now have a state to defend them.”

PA Damage to Brussels Airport, Belgium, after two explosions were heard