A source close to the investigation said a woman in the apartment had blown herself up and one other person was killed, while police said five people had been arrested.
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Belgian authorities suspect him of also helping organize and finance a terror cell in the eastern city of Verviers that was broken up in an armed police raid on January 15, in which two of his presumed accomplices were killed.
Abdelhamid Abaaoud was the target of the bloody, seven-hour raid in the Saint-Denis suburb north of Paris.
Seven of the attackers were killed during the wave of violence Friday night, and an worldwide arrest warrant is already out for one suspect, Salah Abdeslam, a 26-year-old Frenchman. But he said his family was shocked by the attack, and had no idea what they were planning.
Abaaoud was delcared the likely mastermind of the plot by French officials soon after the attacks, but officials confirmed Thursday that they didn’t even know he was in the country until Monday, when it is believed an intelligence agency outside Europe alerted them to his presence.
“It is impossible to tell you who was arrested”. We are in the process of verifying that.
“It was his body we discovered in the building, riddled with bullets”, a statement from the Paris prosecutor said, a day after the pre-dawn raid.
France has mobilised 1 lakh 15 thousands security personnel in the wake of Friday’s Paris attacks by Islamist militants.
Speaking to reporters at the residence of the USA ambassador to France, Kerry said the ceasefire envisioned by the political process agreed upon in Vienna on Saturday would exponentially help efforts to fight the Islamic State group, which has claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks that killed 129 people, as well as end the drawn-out Syrian conflict, which has gone on for over four years. Confirmation that Abaaoud was in Paris will focus more attention on European security services, who ahead of Friday’s attacks had thought he was still in Syria.
Meanwhile, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned terrorists could use chemical or biological weapons, and urged an extension of France’s state of emergency.
The President said he wanted French law to allow dual nationals to be stripped of their French citizenship if they were convicted of terrorism and dual nationals to be banned from entering France if they presented a “terrorism risk”.
Police also carried out multiple raids in southwestern France, in Ariege, Toulouse and the department of the Haute-Garonne. But French authorities say their work is far from finished.
“This is just raw terror to set up a caliphate”, Kerry said before separate meetings with Hollande and Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius.
Belgian police are also reportedly searching for a man named Mohamed K, from Roubaix, northern France, who is suspected of supplying the terrorist gang with explosives.
The brief clip shot from a distance shows two black-clad gunmen with automatic weapons calmly firing on the bar then returning toward a waiting vehicle, whose driver was maneuvering behind them.
With Hollande, Kerry said the civilized world must boost its efforts to combat the Islamic State by going after the group at its core.
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At the President’s request, France’s lower house voted Thursday to extend the state of emergency for three more months.
