A third suicide bomber, Ismael Mostefai, 29, had already been named by police, after being identified through remains found at the Bataclan music hall, another of the six separate attack sites across Paris and its suburbs. Late on Sunday, French planes took off from the Gulf to bomb the stronghold of the Islamic State jihadists, who claimed responsibility for Friday’s carnage in Paris.
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His brother Brahim, who lived in Molenbeek, was one of the attackers who blew himself up during the Paris attacks.
“The need to destroy Islamic State is an issue that faces the whole of the global community”. French defence officials said the United States had stepped up intelligence sharing, enabling Paris to identify more specific targets.
Police raided homes of suspected Islamist militants across France overnight following the Paris attacks, and a source close to the investigation said a Belgian national in Syria was suspected of orchestrating Friday’s mayhem. But one USA official said on Sunday that the evident weaponry skill displayed by the attackers suggests that they might have received training somewhere.
On the final day of national mourning, Paris is still trying to regain a sense of normalcy, after a series of coordinated terrorist attacks Friday left 129 people dead.
France observed an emotional minute of silence on Monday, with Mr Hollande paying his respects at the Sorbonne University, in recognition of the large number of young victims. He stressed that while implementing emergency state since the attacks, 150 raids have been conducted across France.
Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon told the AP that suspects detained in the Molenbeek neighborhood of Brussels had been stopped in the town of Cambrai, France, “in a regular roadside check” but that police had had no suspicion about them at the time and they were let go quickly.
Without commenting specifically on the Iraqi warning, a senior USA intelligence official said he was not aware of any threat information sent to Western governments that was specific enough to have thwarted the Paris attacks. As authorities scrambled to find those responsible, the grieving French tried to return to the humdrum of daily life.
Police arrested three suspects in the impoverished Brussels neighborhood on Saturday and continued house searches. He had been placed under judicial supervision but dropped off the radar and was the subject of an global arrest warrant. An intensive, multinational manhunt continues for an eighth suspect in last week’s attacks, identified as Abdeslam Salah.
In a further sign of growing Belgian connection to the attacks, investigators said two cars used in the violence were hired there.
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Once a happy-go-lucky student at one of Brussels’ most prestigious high schools, Saint-Pierre d’Uccle, Abdelhamid Abaaoud morphed into Belgium’s most notorious jihadi, a zealot so devoted to the cause of holy war that he recruited his 13-year-old brother to join him in Syria.
