Group 'planned 2nd France attack'

The attackers who struck Brussels on March 22 initially planned to launch a second assault on France, Belgium's Federal Prosecution Office said on Sunday.

But the perpetrators were "surprised by the speed of the progress in the ongoing investigation" and decided to rush an attack on Brussels instead, the office said in a statement. It didn't provide any details on the initial plot or its targets and the office couldn't immediately be reached for further comment.

Two suicide bombers killed 16 people at Brussels Airport on March 22. A subsequent explosion at Brussels' Maelbeek subway station killed another 16 people the same morning. Investigators have found intimate links between the cell behind those attacks and the group that killed 130 people in Paris on Nov 13.