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 Police stormed an apartment in the Paris suburb of St. Denis
before dawn in a hunt for Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian militant
accused of masterminding the bombings and shootings, but it was
unclear whether he had died in the assault.
Heavily armed officers triggered a massive firefight and multiple
explosions when they entered the building. Eight people were
arrested, and forensic scientists were working to confirm if two or
three militants had died in the violence.
"A new team of terrorists has been neutralized," Paris Prosecutor
Francois Molins told reporters on Wednesday evening, saying police
fired 5,000 rounds of munitions into the apartment, which was left
shredded by the raid, its windows blown out and the facade riddled
with bullet impacts.
"This commando could have become operational," Molins said.
A source close to the investigation said the dead woman might have
been Abaaoud's cousin, while the Washington Post quoted senior
intelligence officials as saying Abaaoud himself had died in the
shoot-out.
Molins said none of the bodies had been identified, adding only that
Abaaoud was not among those detained.
 Two police sources and a source close to the investigation told
Reuters the St. Denis cell was planning a fresh attack. "This new
team was planning an attack on La Defense," one source said,
referring to a high-rise neighborhood on the outskirts of Paris that
is home to top banks and businesses.
In another sign that Islamic State supporters were active elsewhere
in France, a Jewish teacher was stabbed in the southern French port
of Marseilles by three people professing solidarity with the
militant group, prosecutors said.
One of the three wore an Islamic State T-shirt, while another
attacker showed a picture on his mobile telephone of Mohamed Merah,
a homegrown Islamist militant who killed seven people in attacks in
southern France in 2012. The Marseilles teacher's life was not in
danger.
Police were led to the apartment in St. Denis following a tip that
Abaaoud, 28, previously thought to have orchestrated the Nov. 13
attacks from Syria, was actually in France.
Investigators believe the attacks - the worst atrocity in France
since World War Two - were set in motion in Syria, with Islamist
cells in neighboring Belgium organizing the mayhem.
Molins said an initial attempt to blow in the front door had failed
because it was metal-plated, giving those inside time to pick up
their guns and fight back. The confrontation was so violent part of
the apartment building was in danger of collapsing.
Local resident Sanoko Abdulai said that during the operation 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. Five police officers and a
passerby were injured in the assault. A police dog was also killed.
GLOBAL ALERTS
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.
Anxiety has mounted across the globe about the threat of more
attacks.
Police in New York, the target of the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide plane
attacks, said they were aware of a newly released Islamic State
video suggesting America's most populous city was a potential
target. [L1N13D36J]
A clip of the six-minute video provided by the SITE Intelligence
Group, which tracks militant groups, shows a brief glimpse of Times
Square and then a suicide bomber holding what appears to be a
trigger.
"While there is no current or specific threat to the city at this
time, we will remain at a heightened state of vigilance," Deputy New
York Police Commissioner Stephen Davis.
U.S. President Barack Obama's top adviser on counterterrorism, Lisa
Monaco, told cable channel MSNBC there was "no credible threat"
against the United States at the moment. [L1N13D30R]
Sweden raised its threat level by one step to four on a scale of
five. The high-speed Eurostar train that connects Paris and London
briefly suspended check-ins at Paris's Gare du Nord, and several
German Bundesliga soccer teams said they were beefing up security
before their matches.
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SEEKING GLOBAL COALITION
France has called for a global coalition to defeat the extremists
and has launched three air strikes on Raqqa, the de-facto Islamic
State capital in northern Syria, since the weekend. Russia has also
targeted the city in retribution for the downing of a Russian
airliner last month that killed 224.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said on
Wednesday the bombardments had 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.
The Russian air force on Wednesday carried out a "mass strike" on
Islamic State positions around Syria, including Raqqa, Russian news
agencies reported.
Paris and Moscow are not coordinating their air strikes in Syria,
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.
Two days before that, Hollande will meet in Washington with U.S.
President Barack Obama, who says Russia must shift its focus from
"propping up" Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that
Western nations had to drop their demands for Assad's exit if they
wanted to build a coalition against Islamic State.
Russia is allied to Assad, but the West says he must go if there is
to be a political solution to Syria's prolonged civil war. Hollande
said countries should set aside their sometimes diverging national
interests to battle their common foe.
VICTIMS IDENTIFIED
French prosecutors have identified five of the seven dead assailants
from Friday - four Frenchmen and a man fingerprinted in Greece last
month after arriving in the country via Turkey with a boatload of
refugees fleeing the Syria war.
Police believe two men directly involved in the assault subsequently
escaped, including Salah Abdeslam, 26, a Belgian-based Frenchman
accused of having played a central role in both planning and
executing the deadly mission.
French authorities said on Wednesday they had identified all the
victims from Friday's attacks. They came from 17 different
countries, many of them young people out enjoying themselves at
bars, restaurants, a concert hall and a soccer stadium.
Empowered by a state of emergency introduced in France after the
attacks, police have made hundreds of raids across the country over
the past three days, arresting 60 suspects, putting 118 under house
arrest and seizing 75 weapons.
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.
(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 Frank McGurty
in New York and Roberta Rampton, Patricia Zengerle, Lesley Wroughton
and Peter Cooney in Washington; Editing by Philippa Fletcher,
Richard Balmforth and Ken Wills)
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