A boy lights a candle at a makeshift memorial on the Place de la Bourse in Brussels on March 23, 2016, a day after blasts hit the Belgian capital. (Getty)
At least 31 people were killed and more than 270 were injured in a series of bombings Tuesday morning in the Belgian capital of Brussels. The first blasts rocked the city’s airport, with two terrorists detonating suicide bombs within minutes of one another. About an hour later, a third bomb exploded inside a subway train car at a metro station.
ISIS has claimed responsibility for the bombings.
Three terrorists are believed to have blown themselves up during the attacks, including two brothers. The search is on for a fourth man, believed to be an ISIS bombmaker also suspected of having been involved in the November 2015 Paris attacks.
An official list of the victims has not yet been released, but names of those who were killed have begun to emerge. Here are the victims’ names that have been made public so far:
Adelma Tapia Ruiz, 37
Adelma Tapia Ruiz. (Facebook)
Ademla Tapia Ruiz, 37, of Peru, is the first victim killed in the attacks to be identified. According to the New York Times, the 36-year-old mother of twin 3-year-old daughters, had lived in Brussels for about nine years.
She was traveling with her daughters to visit her mother in New York when the blasts occurred at the Brussels Airport. One of her daughters, and her husband, who was seeing his wife and daughters off at the airport, were injured in the attack.
“It’s very complicated to describe this pain that we’re feeling at home, but as an older brother I know that I have to do it,” her brother, Fernando Tapia Coral, wrote on Facebook. “But even more incomprehensible is not being able to be close to her. And this tragedy today touched the doors of my family this morning in the Brussels airport when my sister Adelma Tapia died in the terrorist attack and was not able to survive this jihadist attack that we’ll never understand.”
Leopold Hecht, 20
Leopold Hecht. (Twitter)
Leopold Hecht, 20, a law student at the Université Saint-Louis in Brussels, was identified as one of the victims by his brother and his university.
Olivier Delespesse, 36
Olivier Delespesse. (Facebook)
Olivier Delespesse was identified as one of the victims of the bombings by his employer, Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, a government ministry.
Delespesse was killed in the bombing at the metro station.
Alexander Pinczowski, 29
Alexander Pinczowski with his girlfriend, Cameron Cain. (Facebook)
Alexander Pinczowski, a New York resident, was killed at the Brussels Airport, along with his sister, Sascha Pinczowski, family members say.
They were visiting family in Europe and were in the departures area of the Brussels Airport, where the bombs were detonated, their friends and family say.
The siblings had called family members to let them know they were at the airport when an explosion was heard and the phone line went dead, the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad reported.
His fiancee’s father, Jim Cain, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Denmark from 2005 to 2009, told WABC-TV that Alexander Pinczowski is a “brilliant young man, clever, intimidatingly smart.”
Sascha Pinczowski, 26
Sascha Pinczowski. (Twitter)
Sascha Pinczowski graduated from Manhattan Marymount College in 2014, according to her Linkedin page. She worked as a production intern at Shiraz Events, a New York company.
She has also worked as an event production intern at UNICEF and spoke five languages.
“I have known the Pinczowskis for over 15 years,” Alex Kneeshaw told the New York Daily News. “We lived in Germany together where I met the whole family and have been a part of it ever since. She is the kindest, goofiest, and down-to-Earth girl I have ever met.”
Bart Migom, 21
Bart Migom, a 21-year-old Belgian college student, is among the dead in the Brussels bombings, CNN reports.
Migom’s family and his American girlfriend were desperately searching for him after he went missing following Tuesday’s terror attacks in Brussels. he was heading to the Brussels Airport for a trip to the United States to visit his girlfriend, Emily Eisenman, of Georgia.
Migom, who says on his Facebook page he is from Diksmuide, Belgium, lived with his mother, two brothers and a sister, according to CNN.
Migom was studying entertainment marketing at Howest Brugge, according to his Facebook page.
David Dixon, 53
David Dixon, a British computer programmer, was killed in the bombing at the Maelbeek train station, The Guardian reports.
PM: I am deeply saddened to hear David Dixon was killed in the Brussels attacks. My thoughts and prayers are with his friends and family.
He is survived by his partner, Charlotte Sutcliffe, and their 7-year-old son. Dixon was working as an IT contractor for a Belgian financial services company and was on his way to the office.
Elita Weah, 41
(Facebook)
Elita Weah, a native of Liberia, was killed in the attacks, her family confirmed to the New York Times.
According to the Times, she was at Brussels Airport to travel to the United States for her stepfather’s funeral.
She is survived by her 13-year-old daughter and seven siblings.
Loubna Lafquiri
(Facebook)
Loubna Lafquiri, a Belgian-Moroccan woman, was killed in the attack the Brussels metro station, Morocco World News reports.
She is survived by her husband and three children. Lafquiri was a professor at an Islamic school in Brussels, La Vertue, the school’s co-founder told CNN.
“She was an exceptional woman,” Mohamed Allaf told CNN. “She represented the true values of Islam with generosity and caring.”
