The most-wanted fugitive from November’s Paris attacks was wounded and caught in a shootout in Brussels on Friday, Belgian newspaper Derniere Heure and other media said.
Other media reported two people had been arrested, though France’s President Francois Hollande said there was no confirmation of the detention of Salah Abdeslam, the 26-year-old French suspect from Brussels.
Television footage showed masked, black-clad security forces guarding a street in the capital and reporters at the scene described white smoke rising from a rooftop.
A police spokesperson said an operation was ongoing and could not give further details. Belgian police had found finger prints belonging to Abdeslam at the scene of an earlier shootout, prosecutors said.
The Belgian federal prosecutor’s office also said an Algerian killed during that earlier operation at an apartment in Brussels on Tuesday was probably one of the people French and Belgian investigators were seeking in relation to the Islamic State attacks in Paris on November 13.
It later said in a separate statement that Mohamed Belkaid was probably the man who went under the name of Samir Bouzid and was killed on Tuesday.
