BRUSSELS _ U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in terror-stricken Brussels on Friday as an official confirmed that at least two U.S. citizens were among the 31 killed in Tuesday's attacks on the airport and the metro here.
The Associated Press, quoting a "senior official" who was not authorized to speak publicly, said that the families of two Americans had been informed of their deaths in Tuesday's bombings. The official provided no further details.
Belgian authorities have not yet released publicly the nationalities or identities of those killed in the two blasts.
On Thursday, Mark Toner, a State Department spokesman, told reporters in Washington that an undetermined number of U.S. citizens remained unaccounted for after the attacks. About a dozen U.S. citizens suffered nonfatal injuries in the bombings, the spokesman said.
Upon arriving in Brussels, Kerry expressed a message of solidarity to the people of the multilingual Belgian capital in French and German.
Meanwhile, in Paris, the French press reported that a man arrested outside the French capital on Thursday and suspected of plotting an imminent terrorist attack had been convicted in Belgium of being part of a vast European recruitment network for the Islamic State militant group.
Police had been hunting for Frenchman Reda Kriket, 34. Last year, Kriket was sentenced in absentia in Belgium to a 10-year prison term, according to media accounts in the French capital.
In Paris, Interior Minister Cazeneuve said the man was "suspected of being involved in this project at a high level and was at the heart of a terrorist network that was planning to hit France." The French press later identified the suspect as Kriket.
But the French interior minister told a press conference that there was "at this stage no tangible evidence" to link any planned attack with this week's bombings in Brussels and last November's strikes in Paris that left 130 dead.
The Islamic State extremist group has claimed responsibility for the Paris and Brussels attacks.
A group of Belgian and French citizens of Moroccan origins are believed to have composed most of the cell that carried out the attacks in Brussels and Paris. Many had traveled to Syria and joined Islamic State, authorities said. Belgian police are still searching for other potential suspects.
Kriket was arrested on Thursday when French police raided a flat in the Argenteuil suburb of Paris. Explosives were discovered in the apartment and the French interior minister said plans for a new attack were at an "advanced stage."
In Belgium, authorities on Thursday arrested six persons in a series of raids in Brussels and its environs in connection with Tuesday's bombings.
It was unclear if any of the six was suspected of being the fugitive accomplice of the two suicide bombers who struck the Brussels airport. The as-yet publicly unidentified fugitive wearing a hat and tan jacket was pictured in closed-circuit footage at the airport before the explosions. He and two other men _ both identified as suicide bombers who died at the scene _ were seen pushing luggage trolleys at the airport.
Also publicly unknown is if any of the six arrested in Brussels on Thursday was a suspected accomplice in the metro train bombing. One suicide attacker was confirmed killed in the metro blast, but reports have suggested that a confederate may have also been involved.
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(Wilshire is a special correspondent. Staff writer McDonnell reported from Brussels. Special correspondent Arthur Debruyne reported from Brussels.)