Salah Abdeslam, Main Paris Attacks Suspect Arrested in Brussels

The most wanted fugitive from November's Paris attacks was wounded and caught in a shootout in Brussels on Friday, Belgian newspaper Derniere Heure and other media said. Initially, police authorities had reported they had injured and cornered the suspect.

Other media reported two people had been arrested, though France's President Francois Hollande said there was no confirmation of the detention of Salah Abdeslam, the 26-year-old French suspect from Brussels.

However, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo went on Twitter to praise police in Brussels for the arrest of the "terror suspect."

Félicitations aux forces de l'ordre qui ont permis l'arrestation de Salah Abdeslam, au cours d'une opération policière à Bruxelles

— Anne Hidalgo (@Anne_Hidalgo) March 18, 2016

Television footage showed masked, black-clad security forces guarding a street in the capital and reporters at the scene described white smoke rising from a rooftop.

A police spokesperson said the operation was ongoing and could not give further details.

#BREAKING

Paris Attack fugitive

Salah Abdeslam

Has been captured in Brussels after 4 months at large pic.twitter.com/lNWZ8zPZRN

— Tom Hall (@TomHall) March 18, 2016

Belgian police had found fingerprints belonging to Abdeslam at the scene of an earlier shootout, prosecutors said.

The Belgian federal prosecutor's office also said an Algerian killed during that earlier operation at an apartment in Brussels on Tuesday was probably one of the people French and Belgian investigators were seeking in relation to the Islamic State attacks in Paris on Nov. 13.

ANALYSIS: Paris Attacks: The Backlash of Failing French Policy in Syria?

It later said in a separate statement that Mohamed Belkaid was probably the man who went under the name of Samir Bouzid and was killed on Tuesday.

Public broadcaster RTBF said it had information that Abdeslam, whose elder brother blew himself up in Paris, was "more than likely" one of two men who police have said evaded capture at the scene before a sniper shot dead 35-year-old Belkaid as he aimed a Kalashnikov.

Other Belgian media were more cautious, however, saying only that there was evidence Abdeslam had been there.

A man named Samir Bouzid has been sought since December when police issued CCTV pictures of him wiring cash from Brussels two days after the Paris attacks to a woman who was then killed in a shootout with police in the Paris suburb of St. Denis.

She was a cousin of Abdelhamid Abbaoud, a Belgian who had fought in Syria and is suspected of being a prime organizer of the attacks in which 130 people were killed. Both died in the apartment in St. Denis on Nov. 18.

France's BFM television said the fingerprints were found on a glass in the apartment, where four police officers, including a French woman, were wounded when a hail of automatic gunfire hit them through the front door as they arrived for what officials said they had expected to be a relatively routine search.

Belgian officials said earlier in the week that police had not expected to find armed suspects at the apartment and that the presence of French officers was not an indication the raid was of special importance to the investigation.

Investigators believe much of the planning and preparation for the November bombing and shooting rampage in Paris was conducted in Brussels by young French and Belgian nationals, some of whom fought in Syria for the Islamic State group.