Gunfire and explosions rocked the Saint-Denis area in the north of the capital near the Stade de France stadium from before dawn on Wednesday as terrified residents were evacuated or told to stay in their homes. Police say the ISIS terrorists were in three groups and three suicide bombers were used for the attack.
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President Francois Hollande has vowed to hit back at IS “without mercy” after Friday’s attacks in Paris, the bloodiest on its territory.
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for Friday’s coordinated attacks, saying they were in retaliation for France’s involvement in US-backed air strikes in Iraq and Syria. The father, who has not been named, said his son was with another man who never left them alone and that he did not tell his father how he was wounded or whether he had been fighting.
“We say to the states that take part in the crusader campaign that, by God, you will have a day God willing, like France’s and by God, as we struck France in the center of its abode in Paris, then we swear that we will strike America at its center in Washington”, a man in the video said.
Belgian authorities have released two additional photos of 26-year-old Brussels native Salah Abdeslam, the chief suspect in Friday’s Paris attacks who is still at large.
Police also carried out multiple raids in southwest France.
The Paris prosecutor’s office has identified that attacker as a 31-year-old French citizen but hasn’t disclosed his name.
In a rare speech to a joint session of parliament, Hollande urged lawmakers to approve a three-month extension of the nation’s state of emergency, new laws that would allow authorities to strip the citizenship from French-born terrorists, and provisions making it easier to deport suspected terrorists.
– Thirty-three ISIS members have been killed by French and other military airstrikes in the last 72 hours, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based monitoring group, said Wednesday.
Hollande said the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle would be deployed to the eastern Mediterranean to “triple our capacity to take action” against IS in Syria.
The attacks have galvanised global resolve to destroy the jihadist group and end Syria’s more than four-year civil war, while potentially restoring ties between Russian Federation and France that had collapsed since last year’s Ukraine crisis.
The message will condemn such acts “unambiguously”, the French Muslim Council (CFCM) said. “Conducted in coordination with USA forces, the raid was aimed at sites identified during reconnaissance missions previously carried out by France”.
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The alliance comes as global players meet to discuss ways of ending the Syrian war, which has spurred the rise of the Islamic State group, forced millions into exile and triggered Europe’s worst migrant crisis since World War II.
