|
 Officials said police had been hunting Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a
Belgian Islamist militant accused of masterminding the Nov. 13
carnage, but more than seven hours after the launch of the pre-dawn
raid it was still unclear if they had found him.
Seven people were arrested in the operation, which started with a
barrage of gunfire, including three people who were pulled from the
apartment, officials said.
"It is impossible to tell you who was arrested. We are in the
process of verifying that. Everything will be done to determine who
is who," Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said at the end of the
operation.
Molins said the assault was ordered after phone taps and
surveillance operations led police to believe that Abaaoud might
have been in St. Denis, near to the soccer stadium which was site of
one of the attacks that hit Paris last week.
A total of 129 people died in the coordinated bombings and
shootings. Investigators believe the worst atrocity in France since
World War Two was set in motion from Syria, with Islamist cells in
neighboring Belgium organizing the mayhem.
 Two police sources say investigators believe the St. Denis group had
been planning an attack on the French capital's La Defense business
capital.
Local residents spoke of their fear and panic as the shooting
started in St. Denis just before 4.30 a.m. (2330 Tuesday ET).
"We could see bullets flying and laser beams out of the window.
There were explosions. You could feel the whole building shake,"
said Sabrine, a downstairs neighbor from the apartment that was
raided.
She told Europe 1 radio that she heard the people above her talking
to each other, running around and reloading their guns.
Another local, Sanoko Abdulai, said that as the operation gathered
pace, a young woman detonated an explosion.
"She had a bomb, that's for sure. The police didn't kill her, she
blew herself up...," he told Reuters, without giving details.
Three police officers and a passerby were injured in the assault. A
police dog was killed.
FLEEING RAQQA
Islamic State, which controls swathes of territory in Syria and
Iraq, has claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks, saying they
were in retaliation for French air raids against their positions
over the past year.
France has called for a global coalition to defeat the radicals and
has launched three large air strikes on Raqqa -- the de-facto
Islamic State capital in northern Syria.
Russia has also targeted the city in retribution for the downing of
a Russian airliner last month that killed 224 people.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said on
Wednesday the bombardments have killed at least 33 Islamic State
militants over the past three days.
 Citing activists, the Observatory said Islamic State members and
dozens of families of senior members had started fleeing Raqqa to
relocate to Mosul in neighboring Iraq.
French prosecutors have identified five of the seven dead assailants
from Friday - four Frenchmen and a man who was fingerprinted in
Greece last month after arriving in the country via Turkey with a
boatload of refugees fleeing the Syria war.
[to top of second column] |
Police believe two men directly involved in the assault subsequently
escaped, including Salah Abdeslam, 26, a Belgian-based Frenchman who
is believed to have played a central role in both planning and
executing the deadly mission.
Until Wednesday morning, officials had said Abaaoud was in Syria. He
grew up in Brussels, but media said he moved to Syria in 2014 to
fight with Islamic State. Since then he has traveled back to Europe
at least once and was involved in a series of planned attacks in
Belgium foiled by the police last January.
A man in St. Denis told reporters that he had rented out the
besieged apartment to two people last week.
"Someone asked me a favor, I did them a favor. Someone asked me to
put two people up for three days and I did them a favor, it's
normal. I don't know where they came from I don't know anything,"
the man told Reuters Television.
He was later arrested by police.
FALSE ALERT
Late on Tuesday, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said
two Paris-bound Air France flights were diverted following anonymous
bomb threats, and hundreds of passengers and crew were safely
removed.
Authorities in the United States and Canada, where the planes
landed, later said both aircraft had been searched and were safe.
Paris and Moscow are not coordinating their air strikes, but French
President Francois Hollande is due to meet Russian President
Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Nov. 26 to discuss how their countries'
militaries might work together.
Hollande is due to meet U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington
two days before that to push for a concerted drive against Islamic
State, which controls large parts of Syria and Iraq.
Obama said in Manila on Wednesday he wanted Moscow to shift its
focus from propping up Syria's government to fighting Islamic State
and would discuss that with Putin.
Russia is allied to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The West says
he must go if there is to be a political solution to Syria's
prolonged civil war.
(Additional reporting by Andrew Callus, Matthias Blamont, Marine
Pennetier, Emmanuel Jarry, Marie-Louise Gumuchian, Jean-Baptiste
Vey, Chine Labbé, Svebor Kranjc, John Irish in Paris, Alastair
Macdonald and Robert-Jan Bartunek in Brussels, and Matt Spetalnick
in Manila, Victoria Cavaliere and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles, Amran
Abocar in Toronto and Dan Wallis in Denver; Writing by Alex
Richardson and Crispian Balmer; Editing by Andrew Callus and Sonya
Hepinstall)
[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
Copyright 2015 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
