French police wouldn’t comment on whether any officers had been shot in the Saint-Denis operation.
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The man at large was identified by French police as Salah Abdeslam, a 26-year-old French citizen who was born in Belgium. “That’s the best solution”, Mohamed Abdeslam told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Tuesday.
Valls said Fridays attacks were planned from Syria.
According to the officials, one of the phones contained a message, sent sometime before the attacks began, to the effect of: OK, we’re ready.
“He was a normal man”, said Christophe, his neighbour in Chartres.
But cracking into their communication won’t be easy. “We did not think for a moment that one of our brothers was related to these attacks”.
“The working assumption is that these guys were very security-aware, and they assumed they would be under some level of observation, and acted accordingly”, said a senior European counter-terrorism official.
Now one of them is a wanted fugitive. He suspects the Internet could have played a role. “Our family owes everything to this country”, the jihadist’s father said.
“The acts committed on Friday night are acts of war. These are not regular people”, he said. “You can not have the slightest doubt that they have been prepared, that they must not leave any trace which would cause suspicion that they might do such things”.
Police stopped Salah Abdeslam hours after the attacks in a vehicle on his way toward the Belgian border.
Both he and Ibrahim were previously known to authorities: Belgian prosecutor Eric Van Der Sypt told CNN’s Ivan Watson that police questioned the Abdeslam brothers in February.
At a Paris school, a father said, “It’s hard to let them go off to school and for us to return to work, for everyone”. He grew up in Brussels, but media said he moved to Syria in 2014 to fight with ISIL.
Also Tuesday, the French National Police issued an emergency bulletin appealing for witnesses who may be able to help them identify a “perpetrator” who died after detonating his explosive belt at the Stade de France stadium Friday.
“We are not committed to a war of civilizations, because these assassins don’t represent any civilization”, Hollande said.
“I swear to God, as we struck France in its stronghold Paris, we will strike America in its stronghold, Washington”, an ISIS fighter declared in a video released Monday.
Before driving off, a grinning Abaaoud tells the camera: “Before we towed jet skis, motorcycles, quad bikes, big trailers filled with gifts for vacation in Morocco”.
France’s response on Monday gained pace with counter-terrorism raids arrests across the country and “massive” airstrikes have been launched on ISIS targets in Syria, as the French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, warned of potential further attacks.
Meanwhile, outside the country, French warplanes have launched wave after wave of airstrikes on ISIS’ de facto capital of Raqqa in northern Syria, and a major Belgian police operation was conducted Monday in the Abdeslams’ home base in Molenbeek, a Brussels suburb with a history of links to Islamist terror plots.
“Some French attacked other French”, Hollande said, proposing the parliamentarians allow the government to revoke the French nationality of the suspected terrorists with dual citizenship and expel more quickly foreigners who pose serious risk to public order and security.
A French official identified the suspected mastermind as Belgian Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who is said to be linked to the thwarted attacks on a Paris-bound high-speed train and a Paris area church earlier this year.
None of those Iraqi details have been corroborated by officials from France or other Western intelligence agencies.
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Kerry said the attacks had not changed plans by United States officials, including President Barack Obama, to attend a global climate summit in Paris at the end of the month. He has claimed in the IS English-language magazine Dabiq to have rejoined the group in Syria. His whereabouts since that interview in February had remained unknown.
