Paris attack: 3rd body found at site of police raid

Ringleader seen on metro on night of attack

A third body has been found in the rubble of an apartment where the suspected ringleader of the Paris attacks was killed in a fierce shootout with police, prosecutors said on Friday.

Elite police launched a massive assault on the apartment on Wednesday as part of the manhunt for suspects linked to the killing of 129 people in Paris attacks. During a violent exchange of gunfire, one of the people inside the apartment detonated an explosives vest.

After the raid the body of the suicide bomber was found, as was the bullet-riddled corpse of the man suspected of orchestrating the attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud. The body has been identified as his female cousin Hasna Aitboulahcen, prosecutors said on Friday.

Investigators had found the 26-year-old’s passport at the scene of the raid, and she was formally identified through her fingerprints. The apartment was severely damaged in the raid and police have now uncovered a third body, a woman, in the rubble.

The police on Thursday raided the home of Boulah-cen’s mother as it emerged the 26-year-old woman had transformed from a party girl who liked wearing cowboy hats to a radical Islamist who adopted the full-faced veil six months ago.

“She was unstable, she created her own bubble. She wasn’t looking to study religion, I have never even seen her open a Quran,” her brother told AFP.

Meanwhile, a police source said on Friday that Abaaoud was caught on camera at a Metro train station in the capital on the night of the carnage.

CCTV showed Abaaoud, who was killed in a police raid on an apartment on Wednesday, at a station near where the police found a Seat car that was used in the coordinated wave of attacks last Friday that killed 129 people.

The black Seat found in Montreuil was one of three cars discovered after the massacres and investigators believe one of three “commando” teams of attackers used it to attack several bars and restaurants.

Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said this week that the three cars, including a Polo and a Clio, arrived in convoy from Belgium on the eve of the attacks.

The cars were all rented by the brothers Brahim and Salah Abdeslam, who lived in Belgium. Brahim blew himself up outside a bar in the bustling Boulevard Voltaire, while police are still hunting his sibling.

The brothers were believed to be part of the team in the Seat that sprayed gunfire on restaurant terraces, but it is not clear whether a third person spotted with them was Abaaoud. The Polo was found in front of the Bataclan concert venue where the worst massacre took place, leaving 89 dead.

Meanwhile, a security source working with Moroccan authorities said that they in October had arrested Yassine Abaaoud, a younger brother of the suspected ISIS mastermind of the Paris attacks after he arrivedin his father’s hometown of Agadir, a Moroccan security sources aid on Friday.

Yassine was arrested last month after his plane landed in Agadir and has been held in custody since, the Moroccan security source, who declined to be named, told Reuters.

“He has been held for about one month now” the source said.

It was unclear if Abdelhamid’s younger brother has ties with his militant cell in Europe. The source declined to give further details on the arrest.