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Shooting Breaks Out During Anti-Terror Operation in Saint-Denis

Source: Pierre Suu / Getty

The city prosecutor’s office announced Thursday the Belgian jihadi suspected of masterminding deadly attacks in Paris was killed in a police raid on a suburban apartment building.  Paris Prosecutor Francois Molins’ office said 27-year-old Abdelhamid Abaaoud was identified based on skin samples and his body was found in the apartment building targeted in the chaotic and bloody raid in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis on Wednesday.

Police launched the operation after receiving information from tapped phone calls, surveillance and tipoffs suggesting that Abaaoud was holed up there.  Eight people were arrested and a woman was killed along with Abaaoud when she blew herself up with an explosives vest at the beginning of the raid.

With France still reeling from the Friday attacks that killed 129 people and wounded hundreds of others, Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned that Islamic extremists might at some point use chemical or biological weapons, and urged lawmakers to extend a national state of emergency by three months.  However Valls did not say there was a specific threat involving such weapons.

Elsewhere in Europe, leaders and law enforcement moved to protect their populations as Rob Wainwright, director of the European Union’s police coordination organization Europol, warned of “a very serious escalation” of the terror threat in Europe.  In Italy, Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said law enforcement was searching for five people flagged by the FBI in response to a U.S. warning about potential targets following the attacks that killed 129 people and wounded hundreds in the French capital.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius urged the international community to do more to eradicate the Islamic State group, which claimed responsibility for last Friday’s attacks on a rock concert, Parisian cafes and the national stadium.  France has stepped up its airstrikes against extremists in Syria, and French military spokesman Col. Gilles Jaron said Thursday that French forces have destroyed 35 Islamic State targets in Syria since the attacks on Paris.

Next week, French President Francois Hollande is going to Washington and Moscow to push for a stronger international coalition against ISIS.  In its English-language magazine, Islamic State said it will continue its violence and “retaliate with fire and bloodshed” for insults against the Prophet Muhammad and “the multitudes killed and injured in crusader airstrikes.”

Paris prosecutor Molins said Wednesday that investigators found a cell phone in a garbage can outside the Bataclan concert hall in eastern Paris where 89 of the victims of Friday’s carnage died. It contained a text message sent about 20 minutes after the massacre began. “We’re off, it’s started,” it read.

Molins said investigators were still trying to identify the recipient of the message.  French authorities have said most of the Friday attackers were unknown to them however two U.S. officials said that many, though not all, of those identified were on the U.S. no-fly list.

The Interior Ministry said French authorities declared a state of emergency after the attacks, and security forces have conducted 414 raids, making 60 arrests and seizing 75 weapons, including 11 military-style firearms. Parliament was expected to vote by the end of the week to extend the state of emergency.

The state of emergency expands police powers to carry out arrests and searches, and allows authorities to forbid the movement of persons and vehicles at specific times and places.

 

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