2 Dead in Paris Raid Seeking Top Suspect; 7 Arrested

 

The office of the Paris prosecutor, François Molins, confirmed that the target of the operation was Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who is thought to have organized the attacks, but it was not clear if he was in the apartment at the time of the raid.

 

Security Forces Swarm Paris Suburb

Police officers, backed by truckloads of soldiers, cordoned off an area of St.-Denis, north of the capital, on Wednesday morning, for a raid aimed at detaining a suspect in Friday’s attacks.

By REUTERS on Publish Date November 18, 2015. Photo by Kenzo Tribouillard/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images. Watch in Times Video »

The police operation unfolded over nearly seven hours, with an initial series of explosions followed by sporadic bursts of gunfire. About 110 members of the security services were involved. Five police officers were lightly wounded, and a 7-year-old police dog, a Malinois named Diesel, was killed.

At 11:47 a.m., Stéphane Le Foll, the agriculture minister and a government spokesman, announced on Twitter that the operation was over and that Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve would soon provide details. At 11:58 a.m. the city of St.-Denis announced on Twitter: “The operation is over BUT the security perimeter is still set up. Do not leave your homes.”

St.-Denis, a city of 118,000 people, is known for its melting-pot population and large Muslim community, as well as a Gothic basilica where many French monarchs are buried. Toward the end of the raid, the police broke through the door of a smaller church, St.-Denys de l’Estrée, for reasons that were not immediately clear.

Djamila Khaldi, a 54-year-old cashier who lives near the basilica, was preparing to take her daughter to the airport when the gunfire erupted.

Ms. Khaldi said was not surprised the police had tracked the suspects to the neighborhood. She said a friend of hers believed she had seen one of the wanted men, Salah Abdeslam, on Monday. “She was terrified and she looked at another woman knowing that she recognized him too,” Ms. Khaldi said. “They did not dare to go to the police.”

 

Gunfire Heard in Paris Suburb

Video by a resident ​includes​ the sounds of gunfire in a police raid in ​St.-Denis​ on Wednesday morning.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS on Publish Date November 18, 2015. Watch in Times Video »

Didier Paillard, the mayor of St.-Denis, said the Rue du Corbillon, where the raid occurred, had “many buildings and habitats in a disgraceful state,” with some apartments lacking even electricity and running water. “We were not prepared for this discovery,” he said of the raid. “This is a city that has 130 different nationalities, including people who come from war zones. We are a population that needs serenity.”

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Mr. Abdeslam was thought to have escaped to Brussels after the attacks, which killed 129 people. He has been the subject of an intense international manhunt, along with a second suspect. It was not immediately clear on Wednesday morning if that suspect was Mr. Abaaoud, or if the police were instead seeking three men: Mr. Abdeslam, Mr. Abaaoud and yet another man.

Attacks in Paris

French media outlets reported that the location of the suspected hide-out in St.-Denis was gleaned from one of the attackers’ cellphones, which was discovered in a trash bin near the Bataclan concert hall, where 89 people died on Friday.

A man arrested on Wednesday during the police operation later told Agence France-Presse that he had lent the apartment to the men as a favor to a friend. “I said that there was no mattress, they told me, ‘It’s not a problem,’ they just wanted water and to pray,” the man said before being handcuffed and led away by the police.

Mr. Cazeneuve, Prime Minister Manuel Valls, Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and Justice Minister Christine Taubira joined President François Hollande at the Élysée Palace to monitor the operation.

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Finding the Links Among the Paris Attackers

Seven of the attackers died, and authorities were looking for an eighth suspect.

 

Mr. Hollande took steps to shore up global support for what he has called a war to annihilate the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. He met with Secretary of State John Kerry, who expressed sympathy but reiterated the Obama administration’s view that the group would not be destroyed until Syria’s embattled president, Bashar al-Assad, relinquishes power.

Mr. Hollande will visit Washington and Moscow next week to meet with Mr. Obama and the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. In Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron told Parliament that the Paris attacks had strengthened the case for intervening against the Islamic State in Syria, a move that Parliament rejected in 2013.

On Tuesday, France’s third and final day of national mourning, crowds gathered to light candles and lay flowers at the Place de la République and at makeshift memorials at the sites of the attacks. In the southwestern city of Toulouse, thousands gathered in the central square, waving French flags and singing “La Marseillaise,” the national anthem.

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“The terrorists want to erase everything: culture, youth, life, and also history and memory,” Mr. Hollande said in a speech at a Unesco conference in Paris.

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“You do not fight against terrorism by hiding, by putting your life on hold, by suspending economic, social and cultural life, by banning concerts, theater, sports competitions,” he said. “We will not yield to terrorism by suspending our way of life.”

 

The Paris Attackers: Who Were They?

A snapshot of seven men suspected in Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris, including Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian who is believed to have been the architect of the assaults.

By YOUSUR AL-HLOU on Publish Date November 16, 2015. Photo by Militant Website, via REUTERS.

Many Parisians and visitors followed his advice, flocking to restaurants, cafes and museums. But the country continued to reel from the attacks, the worst violence on French soil in decades. Officials said the bodies of 117 of the 129 people killed had been positively identified; 221 of the 352 people injured remained in hospitals, or which 57 were in intensive care.

The country remained under a state of emergency, as developments in the investigation emerged in a steady trickle.

On Tuesday morning, the authorities seized a black Renault Clio with Belgian license plates in the 18th Arrondissement on the northern edge of Paris, next to the suburb of St.-Denis, where three suicide bombers detonated their explosives during a soccer game at the Stade de France. The authorities are looking into the possibility that the vehicle might have been intended for yet another attack.

On Tuesday night, the authorities released a photo of one of the stadium bombers — who used a Syrian passport to enter Greece last month, evidently posing as a migrant — and asked for the public’s help in identifying him. The passport was probably stolen, and the identity on the passport page — Ahmad al-Mohammad, 25, of Idlib, Syria — may be that of a dead Syrian soldier, the French official said.

The authorities said the car had been seen — it was not clear when, or who drove it — on the A1 highway, which connects the suburbs of Paris with the northeastern city of Lille, about a dozen miles from the Belgian border.

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How ISIS Expanded Its Threat

The Islamic State emerged from a group of militants in Iraq to take over large portions of Iraq and Syria, and now threatens other countries in Europe and elsewhere.

 

In Belgium, the authorities put the country at its highest alert level. They charged two men — Hamza Attou, 21, a Brussels native, and Mohamed Amri, 27, who was born in Morocco — with participating in a terrorist activity, saying they had driven Mr. Abdeslam, the fugitive, from Paris to Brussels.

The two men frequented a bar owned by Mr. Abdeslam and his brother Ibrahim, who blew himself up at a restaurant on Friday in one of the attacks. The brothers lived in the Brussels district of Molenbeek, also the base for Mr. Abaaoud, the Belgian believed to have planned the attacks. A third brother, Mohamed, who was not involved in the assaults, publicly appealed on Tuesday for Salah to turn himself in.

“We are a family, we are thinking about him, we are wondering where he is, if he is scared, if he is feeding himself,” Mohamed Abdeslam told the French news channel BFM TV in Brussels. “The best would be for him to surrender so that the justice system may shed light on this situation.”

Salah Abdeslam was stopped at a traffic check in the French town of Cambrai on Saturday morning, as he headed toward the Belgian border, but was then waved through after showing identification.

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The Austrian police disclosed on Tuesday that Mr. Abdeslam was also stopped during a routine police check in northern Austria on Sept. 9 — four days after Germany and Austria opened their borders to refugees streaming in via Hungary. He crossed into Austria from Germany in a car with two men who have not been identified, and told the police that he would be spending a few days on vacation in Austria, an Interior Ministry spokesman said.

Mr. Kerry, in a hastily arranged trip to Paris to show solidarity, said the United States and France had no choice but to wage war against the Islamic State, the apocalyptic militant group that purports to have restored a caliphate, or a global Muslim community under a single leader.

“This is just raw terror to set up a caliphate,” Mr. Kerry said before meeting separately with Mr. Hollande and Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius. “This is not a situation where we have a choice. We’re not choosing to randomly go to war. We’re trying to avoid it, trying to find a better path.”

At least four Americans were wounded in the attacks on Paris, and one, Nohemi Gonzalez, died.

Mr. Cazeneuve told France Info radio on Tuesday that the police had conducted 128 raids in France overnight against terrorism suspects. He also said 115,000 police officers and troops had been deployed across the country “to ensure the protection of the French.”

Lilia Blaise reported from St.-Denis, and Liz Alderman and Aurelien Breeden from Paris. Reporting was contributed by Daphné Anglès, Rukmini Callimachi and Elian Peltier from Paris, Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura from Brussels, and Katrin Bennhold and Hannah Olivennes from London.

 

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