Meanwhile, global toy giant Toys R Us said on Friday it had “asked its store directors in France to remove 23 toys that looked like guns and weapons”. “It’s not an option, it’s an obligation”, said Luxembourg’s domestic security minster, Etienne Schneider, who chaired the meeting in Brussels.
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“If we had more and better intelligence sharing, some of what has happened might be predictable and preventable”, Commissioner Avramopoulos said, adding that only five out of 28 European Union member states have so far agreed to exchange intelligence data.
BRUSSELS – Heavily armed police and soldiers patrolled key intersections and subways were closed in Belgium’s capital Saturday as the government warned of a threat of Paris-style attacks. A suspected eighth person, Salah Abdeslam is still on the run.
One of the other two bodies was confirmed on Thursday as belonging to Abaaoud, 28.
No other details were released.
Despite deadly attacks on Paris in January, talks among European Union nations and with the European Union legislature have gone at a snail’s pace for years on vital security issues while violent extremism has thrived.
Teams of attackers started the violence at 9:20 p.m.at the national stadium north of Paris, then started firing on Paris cafes a few minutes later.
The raid was conducted by authorities in St. Denis, a suburb of Paris, targeting the alleged planner of the November 13 attacks on France’s capital, which left 130 people dead.
Since the attacks, requests for information about joining the French army have surged. But French artists and cultural figures urged people to respond to the tragedy with an outpouring of “noise and light”. They hoped the gesture would show “that culture will continue to shine out and to burnish the light of hope and fraternity”. The identity of the third body has not been announced.
Under gray skies and rain, Parisians marked a week since the bloodbath with silence and reflection. Security fears after the Paris attacks have also seen states reintroduce checks at once-untended frontiers.
Police searched a mosque in Brest in western France early on Friday. One of the Paris suicide bombers, carrying what seems to have been a fake Syrian passport, was registered in Greece in October.
In Turkey, authorities detained three suspected Islamic State militants, including a 26-year-old Belgian of Moroccan descent.
The Home Secretary said there also needed to be “immediate progress” on obtaining access to passenger name records.
“The negotiations have taken too long, that must be concluded,”she said. The UK will go ahead with obtaining records from those operating to and from the United Kingdom”, she said”.
Hollande is also going to Washington and Moscow next week to push for a stronger worldwide coalition against IS.
They sang and danced on Place de la Republique, in the heart of a trendy neighborhood where scores of people were killed, majority in the attack on the Bataclan concert hall.
How and when Abaaoud entered France before his death remained unclear. Eighty hostages have been freed, Agence France-Presse said, citing Malian radio.
“We can’t say anything about the exact geographic situation of that individual”, he said. A bill to extend a state of emergency until February and give the police new powers goes before the upper house of the French parliament later on Friday. “We have taken the measures that are necessary”, the prime minister said.
He said that “all Europe must work together to defeat terrorism” and called for an emergency meeting of the continent’s interior ministers Friday.
Judith Sargentini, Dutch Green EU lawmaker, said the bloc should be wary of “scaling back basic democratic freedoms” and must reject “knee-jerk populist backlashes against refugees”, who in many cases are also seeking shelter from terrorists.
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Amid widespread concerns that extremists are returning from fighting in Syria and Iraq to Europe unchecked, Mr Cazeneuve said further delay was unacceptable.
