Authorities say they have found an explosive device and chemicals during search for man seen at Zaventem airport before attacks

A massive manhunt is under way in Belgium as police search for a suspected terrorist believed to have escaped the Brussels bombings after the explosives he was carrying did not detonate.

As raids continued across the city on Wednesday, further details emerged about the events leading up to the attacks at Zaventem airport and Maelbeek metro station which killed at least 31 people and injured up to 230.

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The names of those killed, injured, or missing were also emerging, with a 37-year-old Peruvian mother of twins, Adelma Tapia Ruiz, the first victim to be named.

Tapia Ruiz was killed just after 8am local time in one of two blasts at the airport north-east of the city centre, which killed at least 10 others and left at least 92 wounded. A third bomb that went off at the metro station on Rue de la Loi, close to the European Union headquarters, killed 20 and injured 130.

According to local reports a taxi driver has come forward after recognising CCTV images of the three suspects as men he picked up from an apartment block and dropped off at the airport.

The report said this led police to raid an apartment block in Schaerbeek, where they discovered an explosive device filled with nails, as well as an Islamic State flag and chemicals.

The driver remembered the men had too much luggage to fit into his vehicle and were forced to leave some behind, Belgian news outlet HLN reported. He was also not allowed to assist them in unloading luggage upon arrival at the airport.

Zaventem’s mayor Francis Vermeiren had earlier said the airport bomb suspects “came in a taxi with their suitcases, their bombs were in their bags”. He added: “They put their suitcases on trolleys, the first two bombs exploded. The third also put his on a trolley but he must have panicked, it did not explode.”

Police are now searching for the third man, captured on CCTV dressed in a white jacket and hat alongside two other suspects. His two companions were dressed in black and wearing black gloves on their left hands thought to have concealed detonators. They “very likely committed a suicide attack”, the federal prosecutor, Frederic van Leeuw, told a news conference.

Isis has claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying through its affiliated news agency Amaq that its fighters carried out “a series of bombings with explosive belts and devices”. The extremists had also opened fire at the airport and suicide belts were detonated in both attacks, it said.

It was still “too early to make a direct connection between the attacks in Paris and today’s attacks”, Van Leeuw said.

Isis later released an updated communique, threatening other nations allied against it that “what is coming is worse and more bitter”.

The bombings came days after Belgian officials warned of possible attacks following the arrest in a Brussels shootout on Friday of Salah Abdeslam, the only known survivor of 10 Islamist attackers who killed 130 people in a string of suicide bombings and shootings in Paris in November.

Belgium raised its terror alert to its highest level. The airport will remain closed on Wednesday, and the metro will be running a reduced service, but schools are expected to open as normal following Tuesday’s city lockdown.

“What we feared has happened: there were two attacks this morning,” the Belgian prime minister, Charles Michel, told a news conference, speaking of a “black day” for Belgium and adding that more might follow.

He later announced three days of national mourning, saying with tears in his eyes that the fight against terror was “a common fight, a fight without borders”, and that Belgium was “determined to defend our freedom”.

Local media quoted witnesses as saying shots were fired and shouts in Arabic heard shortly before the blasts at the airport.

Health workers treating the wounded said one of the bombs contained nails. A US official told AP that one may have been a suitcase bomb.

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There are fears for a number of missing people, including a British man, David Dixon who did not arrive at work in Brussels on Tuesday morning and who has not been in touch with his family.

A Brazilian-Belgian man, Sebastian Bellin, suffered severe leg injuries while standing in line at a check-in counter.

Hi father, Jean Bellin told CNN: “My son is doing well considering. He went through his first operation today. Because he was left for about an hour on the floor in the airport in Brussels he lost a lot of blood. So they stabilised him and now he is going to go through another operation.

“I spoke with him twice. He is obviously stunned. The first words out of his mouth were ‘You wouldn’t believe the carnage I saw around’.

Pictures and video posted on social media showed smoke rising from the terminal building through shattered windows, and devastation inside the departure hall, with ceiling tiles and glass scattered across the floor and passengers running along a slipway, dragging their bags behind them.

Police later found and neutralised a third bomb at the airport, a spokeswoman, Florence Muls, said. The state broadcaster, RTBF, reported that at least one and possibly two Kalashnikov assault rifles were found at the scene.

Local media said the explosions occurred in the check-in area, close to the counters of Brussels Airlines, American Airlines and handling agency Swissport, and next to a Starbucks cafe.

Passenger Jef Versele, 40, from Ghent, said he heard two explosions. “Everything was coming down,” he said. “Glassware. It was chaos. There were lots of people on the ground. About 15 windows were just blown out from the entrance hall.”

Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, told BFM TV that the second, louder explosion brought down ceilings and split pipes open, the water mixing on the floor with victims’ blood.

“It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed,” he said. “There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere. It was a war scene.”

Jean-Pierre Lebeau, a French passenger who had just arrived from Geneva, said he had seen wounded people and “blood in the elevator”. Marc Noel, 63, was in an airport shop when the first explosion occurred. “People were crying, shouting. It was a horrible experience,” he said.

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More than 1,000 people evacuated from the airport were taken by bus to a nearby sports hall. The wounded from both incidents were being treated at Brussels’ St Luc University hospital and several other other city-centre hospitals.

An emergency services spokesman, Pierre Meys, said the blast had been “extremely strong. Everything is destroyed, everything is in pieces. There is damage as far away as an underground car park at the end of the street – the shockwave was felt in the stations on either side.”

The Brussels metro authority, STIB, said a single blast occurred at 9.11am in the second carriage of a train that had stopped at Maelbeek. First aid was initially administered in a nearby pub, as shocked morning travellers streamed out of the station and police set up a security cordon.

Wiping blood from his face, one passenger, Alexandre Brans, 32, told AFP that the metro train was “just leaving Maelbeek station for Schuman when there was a really loud explosion. It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the metro.”

The Belgian capital, home to the headquarters of both the EU and Nato, was in lockdown for most of the day, the metro, tram and bus systems suspended and residents asked to stay off their mobile phones so as not to overload the network. EU staff were told not to come to work.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Members of the public gather at the Place de la Bourse in Brussels to leave messages and tributes. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA

The US president, Barack Obama, pledged to “do whatever is necessary” to help Belgian authorities. “We stand in solidarity with them in condemning these outrageous attacks against innocent people,” Obama said on a visit to Havana, Cuba, adding that the world “must unite” regardless of nationality, race or faith in “fighting against the scourge of terrorism”.

Other European capitals condemned the attacks and offered their support and commiseration. In France, the prime minister, Manuel Valls, said: “We are at war. We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war.”

President François Hollande said terrorists had “struck Brussels, but it was Europe that was targeted, and all the world that is concerned”. The Paris mayor, Anne Hidalgo, said the Eiffel tower would be lit in the colours of the Belgian flag “in solidarity with Brussels”.

“These attacks mark another low by the terrorists in the service of hatred and violence,” said EU president Donald Tusk. The British prime minister, David Cameron, said he would chair a Cobra crisis response meeting, adding that he was “shocked and concerned by the events in Brussels”.

The German justice minister, Heiko Maas, denounced “a black day for Europe” and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said the blasts “show once more that terrorism knows no borders”.

Federica Mogherini, the EU foreign policy chief, who was in business in Jordan, fought back tears when she heard the news. There were minute’s silences in the parliaments in Paris, Prague and Madrid.

The Twitter hashtags #Belgium and #PrayForBelgium were trending across Europe and the US within hours of attacks. Images shared included one of Tintin, the cub reporter created by Belgian cartoonist Hergé, saying, “Let’s be strong”, and a drawing by French cartoonist Plantu depicting a figure dressed in French colours putting an arm around a crying Belgian flag.

Abdeslam, the prime surviving suspect in November’s attacks on the Bataclan concert hall, Stade de France and a string of cafes and restaurants in Paris, was captured in the Molenbeek district of Brussels, where he grew up, on Friday, having apparently managed to hide out for more than four months in the Belgian capital, where French and Belgian police believe the Paris attacks were planned.

The Belgian foreign minister, Didier Reynders, warned over the weekend that Abdeslam “was ready to restart something in Brussels, and it may be the reality because we have found a lot of weapons, heavy weapons … and a new network around him in Brussels”.

The interior minister, Jan Jambon, repeated the warning on Monday, adding that Belgium was now on high alert for a revenge attack. “We know that stopping one cell can … push others into action. We are aware of it in this case,” he told public radio.

Belgian prosecutors this week named one of two men still sought in connection with the Paris attacks as Najim Laachraoui, 24, who reportedly travelled to Syria in 2013 and was previously identified by his alias Soufiane Kayal. Laachraoui was travelling with Abdeslam in September 2015 when their car was stopped at the Hungarian border with Austria. Also in the car was Mohammed Belkaid, who was shot dead by a police sniper in a raid in Brussels on Tuesday in the operation that led to Abdeslam’s capture three days later.

A second suspect has previously been named as Mohamed Abrini, 31, a Belgian national and childhood friend of Abdeslam in Brussels.