Another woman – Abaaoud’s cousin Hasna Aitboulahcen – blew herself up with a suicide belt amid the shoot-out.
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Paris Prosecutor François Molins’ office said 27-year-old Abdelhamid Abaaoud was identified based on skin samples, but authorities did not know how he died.
Earlier, a police source said Abaaoud had been identified on CCTV footage recorded at a suburban metro station at the same time as the killings were in progress in central Paris.
Investigators believe Abaaoud, a Moroccan-born Belgian who had fought for Islamic State in Syria, was the mastermind behind the shootings and bombings at the national football stadium, a famous concert venue and several bars and restaurants.
One of his conspirators in the attacks, Salah Abdeslam, is still on the run and the subject of an global manhunt.
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. It has emerged one of the attackers who blew himself up in the Bataclan concert hall Samy Amimour had in the past missed at least three weekly check-ins with French police who were investigating him on suspicion of terrorism-related activity.
The official confirmed an audio recording, punctuated by gunshots, in which an officer asks: “Where is your boyfriend?” and she responded angrily: “He’s not my boyfriend!”
During the debate, Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned that France must be prepared to defend against chemical and biological warfare.
And it is believed the extremists were set to carry out a second attack reportedly targeting Charles de Gaulle airport and the city’s financial district La Defense before the pre-dawn raid on Wednesday.
“It was a big surprise when the intelligence came in”, said a police official.
The suspected ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud was killed in Wednesday’s raid.
Before confirmation of the death, Olivier Vanderhaeghen, who works in Molenbeek to dissuade young men from going to Syria, said that with unemployment at 37 percent among local youths, Abaaoud’s adventures, whether in the Syrian desert or the streets of Paris, seemed to offer an attractive alternative lifestyle.
The king of Morocco was on a visit to France on Thursday.
The National Assembly is lit with the blue, white and red colours of the French flag in Paris.
A source close to the investigation said the five from inside who have been freed were believed just to be squatters without proper identity papers, while a man and a woman picked up outside have also been released.
A series of raids in Belgium and a search of a home on the outskirts of Paris on Thursday were the latest signs of investigators’ efforts to piece together – and take down – the network of terrorists behind the attacks before they can strike again.
Who was the third person killed in Wednesday’s raid?
European officials are meeting Friday in Brussels to discuss tightening their borders.
But the ministers are not expected to order any new measures that could be immediately introduced to restore calm among countries rattled by the coordinated attacks in Paris, claimed by the Islamic State organization, that killed 129 people.
The individual is being questioned but there is no indication of what the connection might be to the attacks.
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French Interior Bernard Cazeneuve is exhorting his European Union partners to toughen the bloc’s borders and move forward on a long-delayed system for collecting airline passenger information. “We have taken the measures that are necessary”.
