Brussels attack victims came from Belgium, worldwide
CHRISTOPHER BODEEN, THOMAS ADAMSON and JILL LAWLESS,Associated Press Wed, Mar 30 11:47 AM PDT
Victims of the attacks on Brussels' airport and
subway included commuters heading to work and travelers starting
long-anticipated vacations. They came from dozens of nations to a city
that's home to the European Union, NATO and other international
institutions.Among the confirmed dead:
Calm and cool-headed, Belgian national Nic Coopman was a highly valued employee of a family firm in Kansas.
The 58-year-old was at Brussels Airport to catch a business flight to Zurich when he was killed in the March 22 bombings.
Coopman's death was confirmed by Sabetha, Kansas-based Wenger Manufacturing, his employer of 16 years. Coopman was a service technician in the Antwerp office of the firm, which makes extrusion equipment for the food and feed industry.
The company said Coopman provided European clients with "commissioning, training and technical support." It said Coopman's "calm manner, professionalism and a dry sense of humor earned him significant respect and admiration from his clients and colleagues alike."
Coopman, who came from the Dutch-speaking Flanders region of Belgium, is survived by his wife.
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Deng Jingquan, also known as Frank, had recently left a job with an established medical devices company to strike out on his own as an Internet entrepreneur.
The 24-year-old Chinese founder of Guoguoxianchi Internet Technology Co. had previously worked in overseas sales for Comen Medical Instruments and was based in Indonesia for nearly two years. Both companies were based in the southern manufacturing and technology powerhouse of Shenzhen just across the border from Hong Kong.
Like many in his generation, Deng seemed to be drawn by the excitement and adventure of a startup project. He was at Brussels Airport preparing to head to Slovenia on a sales trip when he was killed.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Deng was a graduate of the Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute in the southern Chinese city of the same name that invented porcelain and kept it a carefully guarded secret for centuries.
Pointing to a thirst for success in business, he listed former General Electric chief executive Jack Welch and his successor, Jeff Immelt, among his influences.
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Hard work and family were the pillars of Yves Cibuabua's life.
The young Belgian of Congolese origin worked in securities at Banque ENI and was studying for a certificate in business auditing at Louvain Catholic University. He already had a bachelor's degree and a master's in economics from the same university.
The university confirmed on its website that the 27-year-old died in the bomb attack on Maelbeek station.
On LinkedIn, Cibuabua described himself as "brave, passionate and a hard-working person." On his Instagram page he said he was "a husband and father first."
He and his wife, Larissa Scelfo Ciyombo, had daughters aged 3 and 5. "My lil angels," he called them in his last Instagram post in early March.
On Facebook, colleague Lisa Inferrera remembered a kind and smiling man and said others could "feel the love you had for your wife and little girls. ... You radiated something really positive."
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Sabrina Esmael Fazal was a warm and sunny nursing student with a 100-watt smile.
Friends and family confirmed on Facebook that Fazal, a 24-year-old Belgian, was among those killed in the attacks at Maelbeek station.
Her 25-year-old boyfriend Jonathan Selemani, a soccer player, saw her off that morning as she headed to a nursing class at the Haute Ecole Galilee, her daily routine. It was the last time he saw her alive.
Fazal had a young son with Selemani, who has since lined his Facebook page with radiant photos of her and the son.
Fazal was proud of her Congolese roots and once worked as a reporter for a local Congolese-community website.
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Moroccan King Mohammed VI sent a message of condolence and compassion to the family of Loubna Lafquiri, a Brussels-based Moroccan national killed in the bombings.
King Mohammed said that he felt "profound distress and great pain" on learning of the death of Lafquiri.
The royal message was delivered Tuesday to Lafquiri's family home by the Moroccan ambassador to Belgium, Samir Addahre.
The mother of three was a sports-mad gymnastics teacher who taught at a private Muslim school, La Vertu, in the Schaerbeek district of Brussels.
She died in the bombing at Maelbeek station.
A friend, Elizabeth Uribe Meneses, told Paris Match that Lafquiri had had "an incredible love of life" and displayed "beauty inside and out."
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Aline Bastin, 29, was press and communications manager for The Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies. She was on the subway on her way to work when the bomb went off.
In a death notice, her family said the woman from Liege in French-speaking eastern Belgium was "cut down by barbarism in her 29th spring."
After the blasts, Bastin was among those listed as missing. Her family searched desperately for information, but after a few days, her mother said they had lost hope.
"She is never coming back," her mother, Chantal Beaufays, told La Meuse. "Our beautiful Aline is never coming back."
On Facebook her mother shared emotional songs, including Jeff Buckley's rendition of "Hallelujah," the hymn "Amazing Grace" and the 1960s French ballad "Aline." Its lyrics say, "And I cried, cried 'Aline' so she'd come back."
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James Cain learned only on March 22 that his daughter had married Alex Pinczowski. Two days later, he learned that Alex and his sister Sascha, Dutch siblings who lived in New York, had both died the same day, in the Brussels airport suicide bombing.
As Cain and his daughter Cameron hunted for news about Alex and Sascha following the deadly blasts in the Belgian capital, Cameron told her father she had married Alex in 2013.
Cain called the news of his daughter's marriage "the bright spot in our otherwise anguishing week."
Alex and Sascha were headed home to the United States. Alex, 29, was on the phone with his mother in the Netherlands when the line went dead as a bomb detonated.
Alex had traveled to the Netherlands to work on a craft-related business that he and Cameron were planning to start together, Cain said. The couple met six years ago while taking summer courses in Durham, North Carolina.
Sascha Pinczowski, 26, was a 2015 graduate of Marymount Manhattan College in New York with a degree in business.
In November, Sascha had warned that demonizing Muslims would fuel extremist recruitment. She posted on Facebook after the Nov. 13 Paris attacks: "Ignorant spreading of anti-Muslim sentiment and propaganda does nothing but benefit ISIS."
Cain said she was "just full of life — I'd say effervescent." Her older brother was quieter, "a great wit but a gentle soul. ... He had a sentimental side and he loved the outdoors."
Speaking to the AP in the Dutch city of Maastricht, where the siblings will be buried Friday, Cain — a former U.S. ambassador to Denmark — said: "Knowing that they were together, and will now be together for eternity, in a way brings a little bit of peace."
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Fabienne Vansteenkiste, 51, was due to finish her shift checking in baggage at Brussels' airport last Tuesday at 6. a.m. She agreed to work two extra hours to help a colleague. That decision proved fatal.
Vansteenkiste was still at the airport when two bombs exploded, killing her and 10 others.
Her husband, Eddy Van Calster, told French broadcaster TF1 Sunday that his late wife often said to him: "I'm going to die in an attack." He said that she had feared that an attack was likely at the airport during the busy morning peak time.
Van Calster said he and his wife were childhood sweethearts, inseparable during their 35-year marriage.
"She was all my life," he said. "She was the white keys of the piano, and I the black."
Van Calster, who practiced Buddhist meditation with his wife, said he doesn't "feel hatred or anger"toward her killers.
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Lauriane Visart was a young lawyer with strong principles.
The 27-year-old Belgian was a 2012 graduate of Louvain Catholic University. Marc Verdussen of the university's Center for Research on the State and Constitution described her as an intelligent student "passionate about public law."
Visart worked at the Union Nationale des Mutualites Socialistes, a health insurance body. She was killed in Maelbeek station bombing.
Her father Michel Visart, a Belgian television journalist, said his daughter had strong values "which she defended ferociously, such as fairness, justice, tolerance, equality of the sexes."
He urged people not to respond to the attacks with hatred.
"I'm not naive. I know very well that security is essential these days," he told Belgian broadcaseter RTBF. "But I think that if we build walls of exclusion, if we cultivate hatred, we're heading for disaster.
"In the future, if we want a different world, we need respect and tolerance. I don't want to be maudlin, but we also need love. And we owe it to all the Laurianes all around the world."
