18 Nov 2015

Paris attacks: two dead and seven held in police raids

Two suspects are dead and seven people are arrested in police raids in Paris targeting the alleged mastermind of the devastating terror attacks in the French capital.

One of the dead was a woman suicide bomber who detonated her explosive device as police raided a flat, the Paris prosecutor has confirmed.

Reporting from the scene, Channel 4 News Foreign Correspondent Jonathan Rugman says the police believe Islamic State extremist Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the alleged ringleader of the terror plot, may be buried under rubble at the flat in the Paris suburb of Saint Denis.

The flat, the scene of a firefight in the early hours of this morning in which five police officers were hurt, is close to the Stade de France national stadium, where three terrorists struck during Friday night’s massacre in which 129 people were killed.

Three people were detained at the property, while another man and woman were held nearby, prosecutors said.

Abaaoud, a Belgian of Moroccan origin, has been named by French officials as the man behind the attacks and was initially believed to be in Syria, raising questions about how he was able to avoid detection.

The 27-year-old (pictured above) has previously boasted of how he evaded police before giving an interview to the Islamic State English-language magazine Dabiq which suggested he was in Syria.

The Belgian authorities had suspected Abaaoud of being the head of a terror cell which was broken up in January after the attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

French police have also been hunting Salah Abdeslam, whose brother Ibrahim has been named as one of the suicide attackers.

The most deadly attack on Friday was at the Bataclan concert hall, where 89 people were killed when extremists opened fire with automatic weapons as they watched a death metal band.

Others were shot dead at bars and restaurants in the city, while a suicide bomber killed himself and a passer-by outside the Stade de France, where France were playing Germany. The suicide bomber had been stopped from entering the stadium after his explosives were detected.

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