According to major media reports, the first bomb exploded at 07:58 in the departure hall at Brussels Airport Zaventem, with a second bomb detonating nine seconds later. Sixteen people lost their lives in the airport explosions, and many more were injured. That same morning, a suicide bomber detonated his backpack in a subway train in the EU quarter in Brussels, killing an additional 16 people.
The perpetrators of the bombings and their motives remain unknown. The total number of injuries from the combined attacks has not been specified. In response, a state of emergency was declared, the military was deployed on the streets, and schools closed.
Malin Björk, an EU parliamentarian for V at the time, and her partner Virginie Jortay, a school principal, were waiting for their luggage at the airport when the bombs exploded. They had arrived on a night flight from New York and were taking their first trip alone without their children, aged 5 and 8, wanting to get home quickly to see them before school. 'But the luggage never came.
But the luggage never came. Virginie said she would report it missing. And I went to stand in the taxi queue.
Virginie said she would report it missing. And I went to stand in the taxi queue,' Malin Björk recounted. She described the first sound as dull and distant, while the second made the whole building shake.
'The ceiling shook and it fell plaster, construction dust. I thought the ceiling would collapse. The brain does not initially understand that it is a bomb,' she said.
Björk was already at the exit doors, but Jortay gestured that she should go further into the airport instead. 'The exit was perhaps 15 meters away and there were many people there, I was afraid of crowds and panic,' Jortay explained. Björk got out and ran until she was under open sky, then called Jortay and persuaded her to come out.
The ceiling shook and it fell plaster, construction dust. I thought the ceiling would collapse. The brain does not initially understand that it is a bomb.
A taxi arrived with a woman who seemed in a hurry for her flight. 'It was so absurd. We said to her 'You cannot go in there.
It is a bomb. Go back,' Björk said. The taxi driver also tried to persuade her, but the woman went in anyway.
The two women got into the taxi, which drove away from the chaos at the airport. They had already made it home when the country learned the news. Afterwards, much of their energy went to the children, as Björk did not want them to feel there was a risk of losing their parents in an instant.
They downplayed the event significantly for the children, though it was hard to hide that something serious had happened. 'There was so much we wanted to keep away from them. So that it does not plant in them a fundamental fear of other people, or of society at large,' Björk stated.