Belgian police accused of missing lead on Paris attacker Abdeslam

Paris attacker Salah Abdeslam was known to have posted a photo of himself brandishing a flag of the Islamic State (IS) armed group on Facebook three weeks before the 13 November killings but Belgian police failed to follow up on the information, reports said Tuesday. In France prosecutors are investigating an apparent IS video that shows children, said to be French, suggesting they took part in killing Syrian prisoners.

A man believed to be Salah Abdeslam is captured in Brussels Reuters

Belgium's national terror threat centre was told about Abdeslam's photo in October but failed to take a closer look, according to Belgian broadcaster RTBF, which did not identify its sources.

It also said that an informer tipped off police that Abdeslam had been in direct contact with Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the supposed Paris attacks organiser who was the leader of a terror cell broken up by a raid in January 2015.

A magistrate called for further investigation but the anti-terror police said they did not have sufficient personnel.

The claims are the latest in a number of accusations of failings by Belgian security authorities ahead of the attacks, which killed 130 people and injured many more.

Last month, a parliamentary panel heard that Belgian police abandoned a probe into Abdeslam and his brother Brahim six months before the Paris attacks, despite flagging them as priority terror suspects.

 France launches video inquiry 

Paris prosecutors on Monday opened an inquiry into a video attributed to IS that shows two children who are presented as being French and suggests they took part in the killing of Syrian prisoners.

The 14-minute video, In My Father's Footsteps, was released on Sunday.

It shows a teenager who says he lived in France and is the "son of a French fighter who died a martyr".

Another, younger, boy also appears.

"Their identities have not been established at this stage and their nationality has not been confirmed," a source close to the inquiry told the AFP news agency.

To read our coverage of the November Paris attacks and their aftermath click here