Whatever label you ascribe to Abdelhamid Abaaoud, put it in the past tense.
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Authorities had zeroed in on that location in Saint-Denis after picking up phone conversations indicating Abaaoud’s relative might be there, a Belgian counterterrorism official said.
Among other things, Abaaoud had been linked to the April attack on a church in the Parisian suburb of Villejuif.
It turns out Abaaoud was in that building in Saint-Denis.
Police fired around 5,000 rounds of ammunition in an hour-long gunfight with the apartment’s occupants early Wednesday and used powerful munitions that spurred a floor to collapse.
The Flanders town – where a few areas are up to 80 per cent Muslim – was searched as part of anti-terror operations that were carried out in Belgium in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January.
Although the suspected organizer of the Paris attacks that killed 129 people is dead, a security adviser to President François Hollande said Thursday that “we think we are just in the middle of the storm”.
The Kouachi brothers, who killed 11 people during the attack, had links with extremists in Molenbeek. Regardless, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said about the Saint-Denis raid, “The target was achieved”.
For one, at least one Paris terror suspect, Salah Abdeslam, is at large. And the threat from ISIS, which boasted about the attacks and threatened more worldwide, remains very real. Though he’s a French national, he was born in Belgium.
That’s one of several connections between this latest attack and Belgium, a country seen as fertile ground for jihadist recruiters.
Authorities initially gave Abaaoud’s age as 27, but on Thursday, Paris prosecutors said he was 28.
Close to the body of one of three suicide bombers outside the Stade de France, investigators found a Syrian passport – but they believe it may be fake.
As the Paris probe widened to countries across Europe, Belgian police arrested nine people in Brussels, seven in raids linked to a suicide bomber who blew himself up outside the French national stadium in Paris last Friday.
Paris Deputy Mayor Patrick Klugman said his country should be ready for further attacks. “There were many people who didn’t take it seriously, but effectively it was confirmed”.
Still, while many were sought after last week’s bloodshed, Abaaoud had been the top priority.
According to an earlier interview with Abaaoud, he regularly travelled between Europe and Syria, but officials never managed to catch him.
Fabius, speaking on France-Inter radio, said the group “is a monster”.
But it was only three days after the Paris bloodbath that “intelligence services of a country outside Europe indicated they had knowledge of his presence in Greece”, Cazeneuve said, without specifying which country.
While investigations into Abaaoud’s exact role in the Paris attacks are still underway, European leaders are scrambling to understand what went wrong. A discarded cellphone found near a bloodied concert hall led them to his cousin, and then to a suburban Paris apartment where both died in a hail of bullets and explosions.
“We can’t cry “victory over terrorism”, said Michel Thooris, secretary-general for the France Police labor union. It contained a text message sent about 20 minutes after the massacre began. The MPs also voted to allow the government to block websites under the state of emergency.
The decision by lawmakers means the state of emergency will be in place for three months from November 26. The measure now goes to the Senate, where it likely will be approved.
Later Thursday Cazeneuve said he had requested a meeting of European interior and justice ministers Friday in Brussels to discuss the fight against terrorism.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the bloc’s cherished policy of passport-free travel in the so-called Schengen zone would be “called into question” if Europe “doesn’t live up to its responsibilities”. “We know that there could also be a risk of chemical or biological weapons”.
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“The way they are killing is constantly evolving”, Valls said.
