Najim Laachraoui, believed to have been pictured on CCTV footage at the airport yesterday, was arrested in the Anderlecht district of the city, the DH newspaper reported.
The Belgian federal prosecutor has not confirmed the arrest.
Laachraoui, who did not detonate a bomb at the airport, was named as a known suspect of November's Paris attacks.
His DNA had been found in houses used by the Paris attackers last year, prosecutors said on Monday, adding that he had travelled to Hungary in September with Paris attacks prime suspect Salah Abdeslam.
Police believe Laachraoui was pictured with two men who blew themselves up at the airport.
The suicide bombers were named as brothers Khalid and Brahim El Bakraoui and the third man as Laachraoui.
- Federal prosecutors declined to comment, but said they would provide information during the day.
A bomb found at the airport after the attacks was subsequently destroyed in a controlled explosion.
The attacks sent shockwaves across Europe and around the world, with authorities racing to review security at airports and on public transport.
They also rekindled debate about European security cooperation and police methods.
The death toll in the attacks on the Belgian capital rose to at least 31 with more than 200 wounded, Health Minister Maggie De Block said on VRT television.
As Belgium begins three days of national mourning the country's national security council will meet this morning to assess the ongoing threat.
A minute's silence will be held at midday in memory of the victims of the attack.
Meanwhile, as the work of identifying bodies at both the airport and at Maelbeek metro station continues, Peru's foreign ministry has said that a Peruvian woman, 37-year-old Adelma Tapia Ruiz, was killed in the airport bombing.
The so-called Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack, four days after the arrest in Brussels of a prime suspect in November's Paris attacks.
- Brothers were known to Belgian police
Acting under a false name, Khalid El Bakraoui, 27, had rented the apartment in the city's Foret district where police hunting Abdeslam killed a gunman in a raid last week, RTBF said.
Both brothers have criminal records, but have not been linked by the police to Islamist militants until now, RTBF said.
Brahim El Bakraoui, 30, was convicted in October 2010 for firing a Kalashnikov assault rifle at police and wounding an officer after a robbery in Brussels earlier that year. He was sentenced to nine years in prison.
In 2011, Khalid was given a sentence of five years for car jacking.
Brussels police searched a house in the north of the city late into the night, turning up another bomb, an IS flag and bomb-making chemicals in an apartment in the Schaerbeek area of Brussels.
Local media said authorities had followed a tip from a taxi driver who may have driven the bombers to the airport.
Investigators earlier said they were focusing on a man in a hat who was caught on CCTV pushing a laden baggage trolley at the airport with two others they believed were the bombers.
An unused explosive device was later found at the airport and the man, believed to be Laachraoui, was seen running away from the terminal after the explosions.
Security experts believed the blasts, which killed about 20 people on a metro train running through the area that houses EU institutions, were probably in preparation before Friday's arrest of locally based French national Abdeslam.
Prosecutors are accusing Abdeslam, 26, of a key role in the 13 November Paris attacks.
He was caught and has been speaking to investigators after a shootout at an apartment in the south of Brussels a week ago, after which another IS flag and explosives were found.
It was unclear whether he had knowledge of the new attack or whether accomplices may have feared police were closing in.
- The Brussels blasts fuelled political debate across the globe about how to combat militants.
"We can and we will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world," said US President Barack Obama.
rte.ie
23/3/16
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