Belgian Abaaoud was implicated in 4 foiled plots in 2015
Belgian Abaaoud was implicated in 4 foiled plots in 2015
The ISIS jihadist suspected of masterminding the Paris attacks was killed during a major police raid, prosecutors confirmed on Thursday.
Abdelhamid Abaaoud was killed in Wednesday’s assault by elite police units on an apartment in northern Paris, which left at least two people dead.
Handprint analysis was used to identify the Belgian’s body, which was found among the rubble of the shattered building after officers rained fire and grenades on the jihadists in a seven-hour siege.
“Abdelhamid Abaaoud has just been formally identified... as having been killed during the raid” the Paris prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls said he welcomed the death of “one of the masterminds” of the attacks.Prosecutor Francois Molins said on Wednesday that the raid in Saint-Denis had stopped a “new team of terrorists” who were ready to launch another attack in a city still mourning 129 dead.
At least two bodies were found after the ferocious shootout, including what is thought to be a woman who detonated an explosives vest.
Eight suspects were arrested in the massive Saint-Denis raid which killed Abaaoud, but another key suspect, Salah Abdeslam, remains unaccounted for.
Abdeslam is thought to be one of the only surviving members of the Paris attacks gang. His suicide-bomber brother Brahim Abdeslam blew himself up in a cafe but did not kill anyone else.
Abaaoud was previously thought to be in Syria after fleeing raids in his native Belgium earlier in 2015.Abaaoud was implicated in four of six foiled attacks in France in 2015, interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said on Thursday.
“Six attacks were avoided or foiled by the French services since spring 2015. Abaaoud was implicated in four of them,” Mr Cazeneuve told reporters, shortly after the jihadist’s death was confirmed.
Mr Cazeneuve also said France received -"no information-" from other European countries on the arrival of Abaaoud.
“Everyone must understand it is urgent that Europe wakes up, organises itself and defends itself against the terrorist threat,” Mr Cazeneuve told reporters.
Meanwhile, the number of shoppers visiting two of Paris’ iconic department stores, Printemps and Galeries Lafayette, has dropped by up to half in the wake of the attacks, management indicated on Thursday.
French authorities initially asked people to stay home and not congregate, but now urge everyone to go about their daily lives as normal.
Secretary of state for consumer affairs, Martine Pinville, reinforced that message on visiting both city centre retailers.
“We say to all our fellow citizens that they can move about, go to work, they can consume and live normally. That is the message which we which to transmit — that life goes on,” Mr Pinville said.
France’s CDF traders’ confederation estimated there had been “an important falloff in sales” since the attacks but its president Francis Palombi said he was as optimistic retailers would bounce back going into the pre-Christmas period. “The falloff has been very notable in the provinces and Paris,” Mr Palombi said.
