Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a 28-year-old Belgian militant was killed in the police raid.
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It has also emerged police watched Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected mastermind of the Paris attacks being led into an apartment by Aitboulahcen the evening before both died during the dawn raid.
Police sources told AFP news agency that the tip-off about Abaaoud’s presence in Greece had come from Moroccan intelligence.
A young woman, who had been arrested in a street near the raided flat along with Mr Bendaoud and “six people who were in the block or very close to it” have been released, said the French justice authorities. Officers asked her where her boyfriend was, referring to Abaaoud, but she claimed that she wasn’t his girlfriend.
“Abdel Hamid Abaaoud has just been formally identified, after comparing fingerprints, as having been killed during the (police) raid”, a statement from the Paris prosecutor said.
A third person killed in the Saint-Denis raid remains unidentified.
In response to the attacks, France has stepped up its airstrikes against the terrorist group at its homebase in Syria, and French military spokesman Col. Gilles Jaron said that military forces have destroyed 35 Islamic State targets in the region.
In the European Union, ministers agreed to rush through reforms to the passport-free Schengen zone to tighten the bloc’s borders, and Belgium put out its highest terror alert in its capital, warning of a “serious and imminent threat”. However, as early as 4:30 AM local time, gunshots were heard as well as a few explosions, which lasted for more than two hours. “We don’t know yet one can imagine”.
“This is a major failing”, said Roland Jaquard at the global Observatory for Terrorism.
Among the many mysteries hanging over the Paris attacks, few are more puzzling than the fate and role of jihadist Salah Abdeslam, subject of an global manhunt since the carnage. Abaaoud was initially hard to identify, they added, because his body is “riddled” with bullets. Two off-duty U.S. servicemen and a friend stopped a potential bloodbath when they tackled a man who had opened fire on board. “This is urgent”, Bernard Cazeneuve, France’s interior minister, said in Brussels on Friday.
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Prime Minister Manuel Valls broke the news in Parliament to applause from lawmakers who were voting on Thursday to extend the country’s state of emergency for another three months.
