French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve has gravely warned that the European Union must “wake up” to the threat posed by terrorists in the wake of the attacks in Paris last Friday. Hundreds were also wounded.
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Meanwhile, French authorities said a third body had been discovered in the wreckage of the flat where Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the extremist believed to be behind the Paris attacks, died in a shoot-out with police on Wednesday.
The identification of the other two bodies, which included a woman, was still under way, prosecutors said in a statement.
Officials had said on Wednesday that two people were killed in the raid, including a female suicide bomber who blew herself up.
“Abdelhamid Abaaoud has just been formally identified…as having been killed during the raid”, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.
The phone contained a text message sent to somebody French officials believe was Abaaoud about the time the attack started, saying: “It’s on”.
“It was only on November 16, after the Paris attacks, that an intelligence service outside Europe signaled that it had been aware that he had been in Greece”, he said, without specifying when Abaaoud was spotted there and who gave France the intelligence.
Abaaoud, the so-called mastermind of the attack that killed 129 people, was killed during a dramatic siege in the suburbs of Paris yesterday.
Most of the Belgian raids were targeting properties in Jette, Laeken and Molenbeek areas connected to Hadfi, a Frenchman living in Belgium who was one of the seven suicide attackers who died during the attacks.
Eight suspects were arrested in the massive Saint-Denis raid, which took place after authorities received a tip-off about Abaaoud on Monday, but another key suspect, Salah Abdeslam, remains unaccounted for.
Aitboulahcen, 26, was the daughter of a Moroccan immigrant.
Speaking before driving off, he said: “Before we towed jet skis, motorcycles, quad bikes, big trailers filled with gifts for vacation in Morocco”. Paris Deputy Mayor Patrick Klugman said his country should be ready for further attacks.
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Abaaoud’s links to Syria and the discovery of a Syrian passport near the dead body of one of the gunmen have also stoked concerns elsewhere that jihadists could be posing as refugees from the war-torn country as a cover for plotting attacks.
