Residents said an explosion shook the neighborhood at about 4 a.m. (0300GMT).
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Armed police officers take up positions in Saint Denis, a northern suburb ofParis, Wednesday, November 18, 2015.
Police say two suspects in last week’s Paris attacks, a man and a woman, have been killed in a police operation north of Paris. Soldiers and police in riot gear can be seen all around the scene. Molins said that he was charged with terror offenses in 2012 after allegedly trying to travel to Yemen and is reported to have gone to Syria in 2013.
Molins and Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve did not specify whether any suspects might still be at large. Officers exchanged gunfire with the suspected terrorists for an hour before taking eight suspects into custody. “For what it represents, the fight we are leading to eradicate terrorism. And simply for what we are”.
In Saint-Denis on Wednesday, police cordoned off the area nearby, including a pedestrian zone lined with shops and 19th-century apartment buildings.
Heavily armed police squads initially were thwarted by an armoured door and had to use assault guns, sniper rifles, grenades and explosives during the “extremely difficult” and “complex” operation.
The area is less than two kilometers (just over a mile) from the Stade de France stadium, near where three suicide bombers blew themselves up during an global soccer match Friday.
At least seven explosions were heard at the scene of the stand-off.
The message will condemn such acts “unambiguously”, the French Muslim Council (CFCM) said. “We’ve been told to lie on the floor and not go to the windows”. “Kalashnikovs. Starting again”, said Amine Guizani, who witnessed the raid. “Hundreds, definitely. There were maybe 10 explosions”.
The mayor of Saint-Denis said public transport was closed and schools in the center of town would not hold classes on Wednesday. French kings were crowned and buried through the centuries in its famed basilica.
Belgian authorities today launched six raids in the Brussels region linked to Bilal Hadfi, one of the suicide bombers outside the Stade de France.
The group claimed responsibility for killings, saying they were in retaliation for French air raids in Syria and Iraq over the past year. Since then he has travelled back to Europe at least once and was involved in a series of planned attacks in Belgium foiled by the police last January. An unnamed official told the AP that two of the detainees were related to Friday’s violence in Paris.
“A local resident who identified herself as Alexia told AFP she heard shots, “‘booms like grenades and then intermittent bursts” of gunfire”. But French officials are denying the report. But two USA officials said that many, though not all, of those identified were on the U.S.no-fly list.
“I tried to hide my son beneath me, but each time there was shooting he was clawing at my skin”, she said, adding that police eventually managed to get them to safety.
Abdeslam, 26, is the suspected driver of a group of gunmen in the Paris attacks.
Russian Federation has also intensified its attacks on Isis targets in Syria after confirming that a bomb had downed a passenger airliner over Sinai last month, killing 224.
Mr Molins said: “The identities of the people who were arrested in this building are not absolutely certain but Abaaoud and Salah Abdeslam are not part of the people who have been arrested”.
Parliament gave its approval to a package of new laws that paves the way for the country’s state of emergency to be extended by three months until late February and for actions against terror suspects to be stepped up.
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France – and the rest of Europe – remain on edge.
