Police swoop on suburb to flush out Paris terrorists

A woman suicide bomber blew herself up and another militant died yesterday when police raided an apartment in the Paris suburb of St Denis seeking suspects in last week’s attacks in the French capital.
Officials said police had been hunting Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian Islamist militant accused of masterminding the November 13 carnage, but more than seven hours after the launch of the pre-dawn raid it was still unclear if they had found him.
Seven people were arrested in the operation, which started with a barrage of gunfire, including three people who were pulled from the apartment, officials said. “It is impossible to tell you who was arrested. We are in the process of verifying that. Everything will be done to determine who is who,” Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said at the end of the operation.
Molins said the assault was ordered after phone taps and surveillance operations led police to believe that Abaaoud might have been in St Denis, near to the soccer stadium which was site of one of the attacks that hit Paris last week. A total of 129 people died in the coordinated bombings and shootings. Investigators believe the worst atrocity in France since World War Two was set in motion from Syria, with Islamist cells in neighbouring Belgium organising the mayhem.
Two police sources say investigators believe the St Denis group had been planning an attack on the French capital’s La Defence business capital.
Local residents spoke of their fear and panic as the shooting started in St Denis just before 4.30am (0330 GMT). “We could see bullets flying and laser beams out of the window. There were explosions. You could feel the whole building shake,” said Sabrine, a downstairs neighbour of the apartment that was raided.
She told Europe 1 radio that she heard the people above her talking to each other, running around and reloading their guns.
Another local, Sanoko Abdulai, said that as the operation gathered pace, a young woman detonated an explosion.
“She had a bomb, that’s for sure. The police didn’t kill her, she blew herself up...,” he told Reuters, without giving details. Three police officers and a passer-by were injured in the assault. A police dog was killed.
Islamic State, which controls swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq, has claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks, saying they were in retaliation for French air raids against their positions over the past year.
French President Francois Hollande urged the nation not to “give in to fear” or excessive reactions in the wake of the jihadist attacks on Paris.
“No anti-Semitic or anti-Muslim act can be tolerated,” he told a meeting of the nation’s mayors.
French prosecutors have identified five of the seven dead assailants from Friday – four Frenchmen and a man who was fingerprinted in Greece last month after arriving in the country via Turkey with a boatload of refugees fleeing the Syria war. Police believe two men directly involved in the assault subsequently escaped, including Salah Abdeslam, 26, a Belgian-based Frenchman who is believed to have played a central role in both planning and executing the deadly mission.
A man in St Denis told reporters that he had rented out the besieged apartment to two people last week.
“Someone asked me a favour, I did them a favour. Someone asked me to put two people up for three days and I did them a favour, it’s normal. I don’t know where they came from I don’t know anything,” the man told Reuters Television.
He was later arrested by police.