– Hollande declared a state of emergency across France, which lets authorities limit people’s movements and impose zones of security and protection.
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– NEW: UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, said the Euro 2016 tournament will “go ahead as scheduled” in France. “They are not out of our reach”.
By late Monday, French and Belgian officials had conducted more than 160 raids, arrested more than 20 suspects and seized weapons as they sought to identify others involved in planning the attacks, and to pinpoint links between attackers and the Islamic State’s leaders in Syria and Iraq. He told the police that he had met Abaaoud in Syria and that he’d been given several targets for attacks in France, including “concert halls” and “food markets”. In August, a French foreign fighter arrested after his return to France told intelligence officials that Abaaoud had instructed him to strike at densely populated targets, including a “concert hall”.
“He is a barbaric man”, said a French official familiar with the case.
Abaaoud attended one of Brussels’ most prestigious schools – Collège Saint-Pierre – but he fell into trouble with the law and was jailed for theft.
Julien Pearce, a journalist at Europe 1 radio who escaped by crawling onto the Bataclan stage, said he got a good look at one attacker who appeared “very young”.
While the expanding investigation produced tantalizing clues about possible plotters, it also underscored the limitations facing Western security agencies against homegrown terror plots.
Police found automatic weapons, police uniforms and chemicals to make TATP, the powerful explosive that the Paris attackers also used Friday. Turkish and Iraqi officials have also reported having warned Western officials about threats in the past year.
It is not known whether Mr. Abaaoud had any direct contact in Syria with Mr. Adnani, the architect of what the C.I.A. director, John O. Brennan, on Monday called the Islamic States external operations agenda. He blamed leaks about surveillance capabilities for undermining spy agencies’ ability to protect people.
The suspects’ alleged roles in the Paris attacks were not clear. He said that European security services’ “ability to monitor and surveil these individuals is under strain”.
The potential for similar violence elsewhere in the West was highlighted Monday when a purported Islamic State subgroup released a video showing militants praising Friday’s attacks and warning that Washington could be next.
French President Francois Hollande said Friday’s “acts of war… were decided and planned in Syria, prepared and organised in Belgium (and) perpetrated on our soil, with French complicity”. Any constitutional changes would need to be approved by the National Assembly.
In France, the nation observed a moment of silence. As darkness fell it was floodlit in the red, white and blue of the French tricolour along with a projection of Paris’ centuries-old motto of “tossed but not sunk”, suggesting an unsinkable city braving stormy seas.
One of the brothers, named as Ibrahim, died on Friday, and another unnamed brother has been arrested in Brussels, one of seven men arrested in the Belgian capital in connection with the attacks. They include three men who were removed from the apartment at the heart of the raid, and a man and a woman who were detained near the apartment, the prosecutor’s office said.
As police launched an global manhunt for a key suspect in the Paris attacks on Sunday, French officials told The Associated Press that police had already found him near the border, but released him after an ID check.
Officials told ABC News that Salah Abdeslam, a 26-year-old French national who was born in Brussels, is believed to be the gunman who led the team shooting at people in restaurants and bars. Several Islamic State group command centers have been destroyed by the Russian airstrikes and the Syrian army has said that it is making advances with the help of the Russians.
Abdeslam’s brother, Mohamed, told authorities he saw no signs of radical views by Salah.
“Absolutely nothing”, he said after being questioned and released by investigators.
“Ibrahim tried to go to Syria and was sent back by the Turks in the beginning of 2015”, Van Der Sypt said.
British Prime Minister David Cameron said seven terror attacks have been foiled in Britain the past six months alone. “We are thinking about the families of the victims but we should also remember that my mother, one of her sons is dead and she is affected by that”.
El Bali and two others charged with terrorist offenses in the plot remain in custody.
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Salah’s brother, Mohamed Abdeslam, who was himself arrested and freed without charge in Belgium, has called on his sibling to hand himself in. Three police officers were wounded, the source said. French officials have determined that the bomber was among a group of Syrian refugees who arrived on the Greek island of Leros on October 3.
