Salah Abdeslam. | Belgian Federal Police/EPA ‘We’ve got him’ Police tracked down Salah Abdeslam in a house in his longtime neighborhood of Molenbeek.

Salah Abdeslam, Europe's most wanted terror suspect, was captured by police on Friday.

More than four months after Abdeslam participated in the Paris terrorist attack and fled, setting off a massive manhunt, law enforcement officials tracked him down in the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek, only a few blocks from his family's home.

Abdeslam was not armed and he surrendered immediately, the Belgian prosecutors office said.

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel and French President François Hollande announced Abdeslam's arrest at a joint press conference Friday night, hailing the capture as the result of intense cooperation between the two countries.

“We are aware that if this arrest is an important step, it is not the definitive conclusion," Hollande said. "We know that the network was very large in France, Belgium, and in other European countries.”

Abdeslam being captured alive could be a big boost for the security services since he is the only person with a direct link to the Paris attacks to have been taken into custody.

The fact that Abdeslam was able to elude law enforcement officials, apparently without even leaving Brussels, suggests he benefited from a network of supporters and accomplishes, said Didier Reynders, the Belgian foreign affairs minister.

"That is what we will have to examine,” Reynders said.

Asked why it took so long to find him, Reynders said: “There are examples in history when we have taken much more time to track a suspect down. He has been identified in several other places in Europe. Was it true or not? We didn’t know. We will have to look at what led him here, if he accepts to speak out.”

Abdeslam's fingerprints were found on a glass in a house in the Brussels suburb of Forest that was raided on Tuesday, according to a senior law enforcement official.

“We found heavy weaponry in Forest during the first search,” Reynders added. “There will probably be other people to track down. The threat we are confronted to is similar to the November Paris attacks. It’s often several teams with heavy weaponry.”

Abdeslam was taken to Saint-Pierre University hospital, in one of Brussels’ oldest neighborhoods, where there was a heavy police presence late into Friday night. Law enforcement officials were posted at every entrance.

France will seek extradition of Abdeslam, 26, a French national who grew up in Brussels and fled Paris after the November 13 attacks which killed 130 people. Police believe he played a key role in planning the attacks and escorted the three suicide bombers who blew themselves up at the Stade de France.

“I know the Belgian authorities will respond quickly and favorably to our request for extradition,” Hollande said with Michel at his side.

Hollande said he would summon a French Defense Council on Saturday.

The French president said cooperation between France and Belgium has always been intense and this is proof of its efficiency — even if it was a slow process.

Michel said it had been the result of “an intense, painstacking, professional work.” More than 100 home searches have been done “in difficult conditions,” 58 people were arrested in the past months.

Theo Francken, Belgian state secretary for asylum and migration, tweeted earlier Friday: "We've got him."

Before Abdeslam was captured, the Belgian prosecutor’s office said that the man killed in a Forest shootout with police during the raid Tuesday, originally named as Algerian national Mohamed Belkaid, was "most probably" also known as Samir Bouzid, who has been on the police wanted list in connection with the Paris attacks.

Bouzid was one of two men who was stopped with Abdeslam at the Hungary-Austria border on September 9, 2015. Bouzid and the other man, Soufiane Kayal, were using fake Belgian ID cards.

The false identity card in Bouzid's name was used four days after the Paris attacks, in a Western Union office in the Brussels region. The amount of €750 was transferred to Hasna Ait Boulahcen, the niece of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected mastermind of the Paris attacks.

Eric Van der Sypt, spokesman for the Belgian prosecutors, said the flat in Forest was rented out at the beginning of December. Last month, Belgian media reported that Abdeslam spent three weeks in the Brussels neighborhood of Schaerbeek after the deadly attacks. The newspaper La Dernière Heure said he was staying at an apartment in Rue Henri Bergé from November 14 to December 4, leaving when Belgian police carried out raids across the city.

Carmen Paun contributed to this report.

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