The Belgian Government declared three days of national mourning after the bombings, which were the deadliest attacks on Belgium since World War II.

[2] Belgium had more nationals fighting for jihadist forces as a proportion of its population than any other Western European country, with an estimated 440 Belgians having left for Syria and Iraq as of January 2015.

[11] In January 2015, anti-terrorist operations against a group thought to be planning an imminent attack had left two suspects dead in the town of Verviers, with raids in Brussels and Zaventem also being carried out.

[13] The November 2015 Paris attacks were co-ordinated from Belgium and Brussels was locked down for five days to allow the police to search for suspects with the aid of the military.

[17] According to the Belgian Interior Minister, Jan Jambon, who spoke after the bombings, authorities knew of preparations for an extremist act in Europe, but they underestimated the scale of the attack.

[1] Some also reported hearing gunfire but investigators established that no shots were fired, although both suicide bombers were carrying handguns which had detonated due to the explosions.

[1] Foreign victims came from different countries including the US, the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom, Poland, China, India and Peru.

They were identified and named as: The airport attackers had ordered a taxi from an address on the Rue Max Roos/Max Roosstraat in Schaerbeek, a northern municipality of Brussels, on 22 March 2016.

On hearing of the attacks on the radio, he became suspicious of his previous passengers who had refused his offer of help with loading and unloading their heavy suitcases, and had left a chemical smell in the taxi.

He went to a police station and was able to recognise the three men from security camera video of Brussels Airport which showed the attackers pushing the suitcases containing bombs on luggage trolleys in the departure hall.

[39] Earlier in the morning of 22 March 2016, municipal workers clearing rubbish in the Rue Max Roos had retrieved a laptop from a bin.

Analysis of phone records had located them in the area on the morning of the attacks, but it was only after the arrest of Krayem on 8 April 2016 that police were given the address of a studio apartment in the Avenue des Casernes/Kazernenlaan.

A search of the studio revealed little, as it had in the meantime been cleaned, but CCTV recording from the entrance hall of the block allowed investigators to track the movements of members of the Brussels cell who had stayed at or visited the address.

[48] All public transport in Brussels was shut down following the attacks, with major railway stations also closed and Eurostar and Thalys journeys cancelled.

[57] Five days after the attacks, disturbances broke out at the makeshift memorial in the Place de la Bourse resulting in riot police using water cannons to disperse right-wing demonstrators.

[60] The mayor of Molenbeek, to which several of the terrorists involved in the Brussels and Paris attacks had connections, commenced a clean-up operation with the help of national authorities.

Some mosques were closed for using incendiary language and an investigation mounted into nonprofit organizations in the area with links to illegal activities or religious radicalism.

[65] A report commissioned by the government suggested that Belgium had lost nearly €1 billion as a result of the attacks with the hospitality and retail industries being especially hard hit.

[70] Following the attacks, a number of structures around the world were illuminated in the colours of the Belgian flag, including the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the National Gallery in London's Trafalgar Square, the Royal Palace in Amsterdam, and the Trevi Fountain in Rome.

[72] Hours after the attack, the French-language hashtag #JeSuisBruxelles (#IamBrussels) and images of the Belgian comic character Tintin crying trended on social media sites.

[73] Also, hashtags such as #ikwilhelpen (#Iwanttohelp) and #PorteOuverte (#Opendoor) were used by Brussels residents who wanted to offer shelter and assistance for people who might need help.

[77] It is thought that the El-Bakraoui brothers were responsible for the unsolved murder in 2014 of an elderly man who was shot as he walked home from a café in the Jette area of Brussels.

The commission was also given the task of examining the emergency response to the attacks and assistance to victims, the development of radicalism in Belgium, and the structure of the country's security services.

[79]: 11  Between August 2016 and October 2017, the commission published four interim reports: "Emergency response"; "Assistance to the victims"; "Security architecture"; "Radicalism".

[79]: 43  The commission's report also addressed a number of criticisms levelled at Belgium by the French parliamentary investigation into the November 2015 Paris attacks.

Six of the accused (Abrini, Krayem, Abdeslam, Ayari, El Haddad Asufi and Atar) had already been convicted in the Paris attacks trial.

The trial took place with a jury before presiding judge Laurence Massart in the Justitia building (the former headquarters of NATO) in Evere, Brussels.

According to Ana Milosevic, a researcher at KU Leuven, societal tensions and the need for answers about the causes and consequences of the attacks were salient in the first days and weeks after the event.

[90] Following a public competition, a monument to the victims was unveiled by King Philippe on the first anniversary of the attacks on the pedestrianized section of the Rue de la Loi/Wetstraat, between Schuman metro station and the Parc du Cinquantenaire/Jubelpark.

The monument, by Jean-Henri Compère, is called Wounded But Still Standing in Front of the Inconceivable and is constructed from two 20-metre (66 foot) long horizontal surfaces rising skywards.