French police conducted 128 raids across France overnight, the Interior Minister announced this morning, as the hunt for suspects in Friday’s attacks on Paris continues.
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France’s prime minister conceded Tuesday that authorities still don’t know how many people were involved in the attacks.
French authorities have named some of the perpetrators of the November 13 attacks in Paris.
Four were French, they said, and the fifth was stopped and fingerprinted in Greece in October and may have been Syrian.
As an worldwide police manhunt continued for fugitive Salah Abdeslam, German police said three people were arrested Tuesday in the case by a SWAT team near the western city of Aachen, close to the border with Belgium.
This during a standoff underway around the building believed to be holding a Belgian militant suspected of masterminding last week Friday’s attacks.
Hollande said any places where people are “glorifying” terrorism will be shut down.
Kerry described Islamic State’s strategy as “just raw terror” and said there was no choice but to fight the group with force. “We agreed to exchange more information and I’m convinced that over the course of the next weeks, (the ISIL)will feel greater pressure”.
As France heightens its assault on militants in Syria, President Hollande has called on U.S. President Obama and Russian President Putin to come together in an global coalition to address the conflict in Syria and defeat the Islamic State group. France’s request received unanimous support, USA Today said. It invoked an article of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty that has never been used, which states nations must provide assistance when one of its members falls victim to “armed aggression”. He outlined that goal in a joint session of parliament.
The raid was carried out at 12.30am GMT using 10 fighter jets launched from the United Arab Emirates and Jordan.
“France is at war and we will intensify attacks”.
“We’re not engaged in a war of civilisations, because these assassins do not represent any”.
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Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said the operation neutralised a “new terrorist threat”, and that “everything led us to believe that, considering their armaments, the structured organisation and their determination, they were ready to act”. Media in Belgium said Abaaoud had been involved in a series of planned attacks in Belgium foiled by the police last January.
