urkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan inspects a guard of honor during the official welcome for him at Brussels' Royal palace | OLIVIER HOSLET/ EPA Turkey deported Brussels bomber last year One of the Brussels bombers was arrested in Turkey last year, says Erdoğan.

One of the men who carried out Tuesday's bomb attacks in Brussels had been arrested in Turkey last year and deported, but Belgium ignored warnings that he was a "foreign terrorist fighter," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Wednesday.

He was quoted by news agencies as saying that one of the attackers was detained at Gaziantep on the Turkish border with Syria last June. The following month, according to the Associated Press, Turkey notified Belgian authorities of his deportation.

"Despite our warnings that this person was a foreign terrorist fighter, Belgium could not establish any links with terrorism," Erdoğan was quoted as saying.

The president didn't say which of the four attackers it was, but Turkish state news agency Anadolu, citing foreign ministry sources, named him as Brahim el-Bakraoui — one of two brothers identified by Belgian authorities on Wednesday as suicide bombers who took part in Tuesday's deadly attacks.

Erdoğan's remarks could further undermine the credibility of Belgium's security services, who have already come under sharp criticism for allowing Islamist radicalism to fester in central Brussels, such as the Molenbeek district which was home to some of the attackers who killed 130 people in Paris last November. Belgium produces proportionally more jihadists who go off to fight in Syria and Iraq than any other European nation.

Belgian federal prosecutor Frédéric Van Leeuw said the death toll from the suicide-bomb attacks on Zaventem airport and a subway train in Brussels’ city center could rise from 31 because of the serious injuries sustained by some of the 270 people hurt.

He said Belgian-born Brahim el-Bakraoui carried out the airport attack together with a second suicide bomber who has not yet been identified, killing 11 people, while Khalid el-Bakraoui detonated his bomb on a subway train entering Maalbeek station in the heart of the city’s EU district, killing 20 people. ISIL claimed responsibility for both attacks.

A third man who took part in the airport bombings fled the scene without detonating his bag of explosives and was still at large, Van Leeuw said. He is one of three men caught on CCTV pushing luggage carts through the airport minutes before the blasts.

“There are a number of people related to yesterday’s attacks still at large in our country, who still pose a danger to our country,” said Paul Van Tigchelt, head of the government’s threat analysis center OCAM, adding that the country would remain on the highest security alert level.

Bomber's last testament

Belgian media had earlier identified this suspect as Najim Laachraoui and briefly reported that he had been arrested in the Brussels district of Anderlecht, but security officials denied these reports and the prosecutor didn’t name him.

Laachraoui, 24, has been the subject of a manhunt since the November 13 attacks in Paris, which killed 130 people. The police wanted notice says traces of his DNA were found in a house and an apartment raided by police.

The el-Bakraoui brothers had police records, the prosecutor said, but did not previously have known links to terrorism.

French media reported that Khalid el-Bakraoui rented a hideout in Charleroi used by one of the Paris attackers before they left for France and was sentenced to five years in prison in 2011 for car theft and violence. Brahim was convicted for violence against police officers after a theft in 2010, according to Belgian press. None of these details have been confirmed by police.

Van Leeuw, the federal prosecutor, said a taxi driver who had driven the three airport bombers to Zaventem led police back to an apartment in the Brussels district of Schaerbeek, where they found large quantities of explosives and chemicals.

In a trash bin next to the apartment, police found a laptop with what the prosecutor called Brahim el-Bakraoui’s last testament. It said he didn’t feel safe anymore, “didn’t know what to do” and didn’t want to end up in a prison cell.

Europe ‘at war’

The Belgian royal family led the nation in a minute’s silence at midday Wednesday and the country has declared three days of mourning for the victims.

Across Europe, there were acts of solidarity with Belgium on Tuesday night and Wednesday’s front pages reflected fear and defiance. “We are at war,” declared Germany’s top-selling Bild. “Terrorists strike at heart of Europe,” said other newspapers.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said ISIL was known to be “mobilizing a certain number of its groups and individuals who come from Syria, who are coming through the borders” and “organizing commandos to hit Europe.”

In Israel, however, Intelligence Minister Israel Katz was particularly blunt in his criticism of the way Belgium fights Islamic terrorists, saying that if the Belgians “continue eating chocolate and enjoying life…they won’t be able to fight them.”

The public, unsecured area of Zaventem airport and a crowded, rush-hour subway train certainly presented soft targets to ISIL, which said its fighters had attacked “a country participating in the international coalition against the Islamic State.”

But the bloodshed in the capital of the European Union exposes the whole Continent’s continued vulnerability to terrorism, just four months after the Paris attacks, and adds new urgency to the debate about open borders, the balance between civil liberties and security, the war in Syria, the refugee crisis and how to halt the radicalization of young Muslim men born in the EU.

Only last Friday, Belgium was claiming it had dealt a blow to ISIL with the arrest in Brussels of Salah Abdeslam, who allegedly handled the logistics for the Paris attackers. His fingerprints were found in an apartment in Brussels last week, where police also found detonators.