As gunshots rang out, an officer was heard shouting: “Where is your boyfriend?”
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It says the killers’ attack on “culture and freedom” should unite people of all races, faiths and backgrounds.
Thursday, Belgian authorities conducted six raids on Brussels locations related to Bilal Hadfi, one of those who blew himself up outside the Stade de France where the French and German soccer teams were squaring off before tens of thousands of fans, said Eric Van Der Sypt from the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office.
Speaking Thursday about Abaaoud’s demise in the Saint-Denis raid, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said, “The target was achieved”. Abaaoud had a criminal history, including an arrest in Belgium in 2010 for armed robbery along with Salah Abdeslam, another suspected plotter in the Paris attack who is still on the run.
You could call him the ringleader of the bloody attacks in Paris.
The body had been found riddled with holes amid the wreckage in the aftermath of Wednesday’s raid, Paris’s prosecutor said in a statement. Confirmation that Abaaoud was in Paris will focus more attention on European security services, who ahead of Friday’s attacks had thought he was still in Syria.
Belgium is keeping in custody two of the nine people detained during a spate of raids on Thursday.
The officials say her exact relationship with the suspected mastermind, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, has not been confirmed.
According to the prosecutor, police fired a few 5,000 rounds during the raid, which led to eight arrests and left five officers injured.
Next week, French President Francois Hollande is going to Washington and Moscow to push for a stronger worldwide coalition against IS.
This undated image made available in the Islamic State’s English-language magazine Dabiq, shows Belgian Abdelhamid Abaaoud. However, he says no Greek agency has a record of Abaaoud’s presence.
Meanwhile, France’s Lower House of Parliament approved extending the state of emergency through February, the upper house will take up the measure Friday.
And France’s interior minister, Cazeneuve, will press the case for more concerted European action – including bolstering borders – during an upcoming European Union justice council meeting in Brussels. He added, “We know that there could also be a risk of chemical or biological weapons”.
The State Department issued a warning Wednesday that St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, Milan’s cathedral and La Scala opera house, as well as churches, synagogues, restaurants, theaters and hotels had been identified as “potential targets”.
French authorities have announced that Islamic State attack planner Abdelhamid Abaaoud is dead.
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Raf Casert and John-Thor Dahlburg in Brussels; Thomas Adamson, Samuel Petrequin, Angela Charlton and Jamey Keaten in Paris; and Bassem Mroue also contributed.
