Jewish Museum suspect 'admits to killings'

The French man held over the killing three people at the Jewish Museum in Brussels had recently returned from Syria, where he had joined jihadist groups, officials said.

ITV News Correspondent Claire Stewart reports:

The man arrested in France on suspicion of killing three people at Brussels' Jewish Museum has been carrying a Kalashnikov wrapped in a flag with the inscriptions of a militant Islamist group, prosecutors said.

Mehdi Nemmouche, carried the flag of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), an ultra-conservative militant group reconstituted from an earlier incarnation of al Qaeda and active in Syria and Iraq.

The 29-year-old Frenchman is said to have returned recently from fighting with Islamist militant rebels in Syria, prosecutors said.

Read: Suspect 'arrested' in France over Jewish Museum killings

The 29-year-old Frenchman arrested over the fatal shooting of three people at Brussels' Jewish Museum, has admitted to the killings, authorities said.

Mehdi Nemmouche is said to have admitted to the shooting in a video recording he was carrying while arrested in France.

"(In the video) he states that he committed the attack in Brussels against the Jews," Belgian federal prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said at a press conference.

Read: Suspect 'arrested' in France over Jewish Museum killings

The 29-year-old Frenchman arrested over the fatal shooting of three people at Brussels' Jewish Museum was radicalised during the last of his five stays in jail in France, a prosecutor said.

"During his last stay in jail he was noticed for extremist (Islamic) proselytism," Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said.

He said that the suspect, Mehdi Nemmouche, travelled to Syria only three weeks after he was freed in December 2012.

Read: Suspect 'arrested' in France over Jewish Museum killings

French media have reported that the man arrested over the Jewish Museum shootings in Brussels, was suspected of having visited jihadist groups in Syria in 2013.

Joel Rubinfeld, head of the Belgian League against Antisemitism, told of their concerns over the Syrian visit:

Read more: Suspect 'arrested' in France over Jewish Museum killings

French police have arrested a 29-year-old man suspected of being involved in the shooting deaths last weekend of three people at Brussels' Jewish Museum, official sources in Belgium and France said on Sunday.

Read more: CCTV shows Jewish Museum suspect open fire

The Frenchman was arrested in the southern French city of Marseilles on Friday and had a Kalashnikov and another gun with him, a French police source said.

The man, from the northern city of Roubaix, had been in jail in 2012.

More: Suspect 'arrested' in France over Jewish Museum killings

AFP are reporting that the French police have arrested a suspect in Marseilles, allegedly tied to the Brussels Jewish Museum shootings last week.

More: Belgian police still hunting gunman from Jewish museum

Belgian police are still hunting a gunman who shot dead two Israelis and a French woman at the Jewish Museum in Brussels, in an attack thought to be motivated by anti-Semitism.

Security around all Jewish institutions in Belgium was raised to the highest level following Saturday's shooting, while French authorities stepped up security after two Jews were attacked near a Paris synagogue.

CCTV footage of the attacker who opened fire at the Brussels Jewish Museum has been released, showing the man taking a Kalashnikov shoulder rifle from a bag and shooting before walking away.

Belgian prosecutors said the suspect "probably acted alone, was armed and well prepared".

The death toll following an attack at Brussels' Jewish Museum has risen to four, according to Israeli media.

Haaretz reported a Belgian man in his 20s who had been critically injured in the attack had died as a result of his injuries.