On Thursday night, police reported performing 182 raids, detaining 17 people, and seizing 76 weapons plus drugs. Police also seized 250,000 euros.
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This should include a thorough examination of European Union passports as well as checks of their personal information with databases.
How and when Abaaoud entered France before his death remained unclear. “We need more Europe”, added Etienne Schneider. Seven assailants died in the attacks and a suspected eighth is still on the run.
No other details were released.
As France struggles to recover from the November 13 attacks, promoters said on Friday that ticket sales for concerts in Paris had fallen by around 80 per cent in the past week.
Large crowds converged at the scenes of the attacks and landmarks across the French capital at 9.20pm (8.20pm British time) to hold vigils and mark the exact moment last week that IS militants set in motion a series of co-ordinated attacks.
The Schengen area will be scrutinized after it was revealed that the mastermind behind the attacks was a Belgian national, Abdelhamid Abaaoud.
The black Seat found in Montreuil was one of three cars discovered after the massacres and investigators believe one of three “commando” teams of attackers used it to attack several bars and restaurants. But French artists and cultural figures urged people to respond to the tragedy with an outpouring of “noise and light”.
In a letter published by Huffington Post, they said the killers’ attack on “culture and freedom” should unite people of all races, faiths and backgrounds.
Prosecutors say Wednesday’s raid in Saint-Denis targeted another unit linked to Abaaoud that was preparing to launch further attacks. The identity of the third body has not been announced.
Authorities had identified the body of ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud.
Marking a week since the carnage, some Parisians lit candles on Friday and paid tribute to the victims with reflection. A gathering Friday at France’s oldest mosque to show inter-community solidarity was canceled because of security fears.
“The European Commission has agreed to present, by the end of the year, a plan to reform the Schengen border code to allow systematic and obligatory checks at all external borders for all travellers, including those who benefit from free movement”.
France will maintain control over its borders as long as the terrorist threat requires such measures, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Friday.
Ms May said there needed to be “immediate progress” on obtaining access to passenger name records, and said Britain would press ahead with its own checks.
Friends of her family in their hometown of Aulnay-sous-Bois, on the northeastern outskirts of Paris, said she had lived there until recently.
Morocco’s king is in France and met French President Francois Hollande on Friday. The ceremony will be at the gold-domed Hotel des Invalides, where Napoleon’s tomb lies and which is seen as a symbol of France’s military and global strength.
Armed police and soldiers are patrolling the streets, subways are closed and many shops have shut their doors in the Belgian capital Brussels as the government issued a warning over possible Paris-style terror attacks. But the France Info broadcaster said police are still trying to determine if this was in fact the case.
“We can’t say anything about the exact geographic situation of that individual”, he said.
“Police are actively looking for him”, a spokesman for the Belgian prosecutor’s office said Friday.
French police official Jean-Marc Falcone, speaking on radio, said he was unable to say whether Abdeslam, whose brother, Brahim, blew himself up in the attack, could be back in French territory. “I can’t tell you where Salah Abdeslam is”.
France has called for changes to the functioning of the EU’s Schengen border-free travel zone, which normally does not monitor the entry and exit of citizens of its 26 countries.
Ministers, however, were not expected to order any new measures that could be immediately introduced.
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Arriving for emergency talks in Brussels earlier today, Home Secretary Theresa May backed French calls to clamp down on illegal arms trafficking and long-delayed measures to gather information on airline passengers.
