In response to the Paris attacks, French police carried out raids across the country for a fifth day overnight on Thursday.
Advertisement
Another key suspect, Salah Abdeslam, remains unaccounted for and is thought to be one of the surviving members of the group of assailants behind the Paris attacks.
Abaaoud was wanted in Belgium where he had been convicted in absentia of recruiting foreign fighters for the Islamic State group and kidnapping his brother, who he persuaded to join him in Syria at age 13.
But police said they found no evidence linking a mobile phone found in the Athens apartment, nor Damash, to Abaaoud.
The 28 governments also want to look at cracking down on the firearms trade and will discuss a possible Europe-wide data system to collate passenger information.
The scale of the worldwide Islamist threat has been underlined by an attack by gunmen on an global hotel in the Malian capital Bamako – a former French colony – which left at least three dead, with scores taken hostage.
Mr Valls spoke on French television after authorities confirmed the ringleader of last Friday’s massacre, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was among those killed as police besieged an apartment block in a Paris suburb.
Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said the heightened security measures were “based on quite precise information about the risk of an attack like the one that happened in Paris… where several individuals with arms and explosives launch actions, perhaps even in several places at the same time”.
French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve has gravely warned that the European Union must “wake up” to the threat posed by terrorists in the wake of the attacks in Paris last Friday.
And in Turkey, officials detained 26-year-old Ahmad Dahmani, a Belgian national of Moroccan origin, who was believed to have been in contact with the Paris attackers.
The interior ministers will be urged by France to reach a few balance between the need to beef-up security at the outer Schengen borders, while also retaining the spirit of freedom of movement.
French troops patrol around the Eifel Tower on January 12, 2015 in Paris, France.
Belgian PM Charles Michel has defended Belgium’s security services amid claims the attacks were organised there.
They also said Aitboulahcen had not blown herself up with a suicide vest, as initially believed, which suggests the body parts collected after the raid belonged to the third, unidentified, person.
Investigators revealed Friday that Abaaoud was caught on camera at a Paris Metro station in Montreuil, to the east of the capital, on the night of the attacks.
Advertisement
Next week Hollande is going to Washington and Moscow to push for a stronger worldwide coalition against IS.
