BRUSSELS, Nov 26: Fourteen people were detained in Belgium and France on Monday as part of an international probe into the killing of Afghan opposition commander Ahmad Shah Masood, slain two days before the Sept 11 attacks on the United States.

Twelve were detained in Belgium and two, including a Tunisian man, in France, sources close to the investigation said.

In Belgium the suspects were arrested in Brussels, Mons and Louvain, while in France one was arrested in Paris, the second on a farm near the Belgian border.

The arrests followed the issuing of an international arrest warrant by a judge in Belgium, which is suspected to have been a point of passage for at least one of two men who killed Masood in a suicide bomb attack at his home in Afghanistan’s Panjsheer valley on September 9.

The alleged killers, who gained access to Masood by posing as journalists, were Moroccan citizens carrying Belgian passports stolen from consulates in Strasbourg and The Hague.

RTL-TVI said that at least one of the suicide bombers had travelled to Brussels where he received assistance from all or some of the suspects detained on Monday, a report neither confirmed nor denied by the Belgian authorities.—AFP