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Belgian police arrest ‘several people’ after searches linked to Paris attacks

An global manhunt is continuing for Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect linked to the Paris attacks.

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He is identified as Salah Abdeslam, a 26-year-old man born in Brussels, Belgium. The posting soliciting information about the so-called eighth suspect warns that he is unsafe and that anyone with information should call authorities.

In the Paris attacks on Friday night, the assailants targeted six sites, the deadliest being a massacre at a concert hall where at least 80 people were killed. Earlier, the first of the seven dead attackers was named as Ismail Mostefai.

Michel said: “Belgium has a central position at the heart of Europe, a small country whose local scale favours the movement of people with hostile intent”, he said.

The Frenchman was known to Belgian authorities who had been following his brother’s activities, Geens said.

That official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the ongoing investigation, also said two of the seven attackers who died in Paris on Friday night were French men living in Brussels.

During his youth, Mostefai lived in a middle-class, predominantly Arab neighborhood in the Paris suburb of Courcouronne.

He is one of seven militants who died in the slaughter, blowing himself up at the Bataclan musical hall, the bloodiest of Friday’s attacks. A scream was heard somewhere at the center of the crowd and as he heard more screams people panicked and ran, emptying the square in a matter of moments.

Those arrested were in contact with the Paris attackers, a senior Belgian counterterrorism source told CNN.

Also Sunday, a French judicial official said the father, brother and other family members of suicide bomber Omar Ismael Mostefai – the only terrorist to be publicly identified by authorities – were detained and were being questioned, French media reported.

World leaders united on Sunday to denounce terrorism at a heavily-guarded G20 summit in Turkey and observed a minute’s silence in respect of those who were killed.

More details have emerged about the IS attack which was the worst terrorist outrage in Europe for more than a decade, leaving at least 129 dead and 350 wounded.

Throughout the Sunday evening service, the sound of sirens drowned out the tolling bell of the Notre-Dame Cathedral.

Thousands of mourners gathered both inside and outside the place of worship, which had been closed to tourists since the unprecedented attacks at multiple sites in the French capital at the weekend.

Three teams of extremists carried out the coordinated gun-and-suicide bombing attacks across Paris, a French prosecutor said Saturday.

Only in largely French-speaking Brussels, and particularly Molenbeek, formerly a fiefdom of the French-speaking Socialist party, was there still a problem, he said. The Islamic State released a statement claiming responsibility for the attack, and French president Francois Hollande called the attacks “an act of war.”

The sports minister said at least one of the bombers who detonated their explosives near the stadium had tried to enter the venue where France were playing Germany in an worldwide football match at the time.

A few of the Paris attackers were also known to Belgian intelligence, the source said.

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Paying tribute to the actions of Belgium’s authorities, Molins later added, “The three individuals who had been seen this morning have been arrested”. Screams could be distinctly heard.

Candles and a miniature Eiffel Tower are placed at a memorial near the Bataclan concert hall