Two terror suspects killed in 7-hour police operation in Paris

Eight people were also arrested during the police raid, launched before dawn at a flat in a quiet working-class district of Saint-Denis, three kilometres from the Stade de France, one of the locations attacked on Friday.

A second body is removed from the apartment raided by French police special forces in the northern Paris suburb of Saint-Denis on November 18, 2015. Eric Feferberg/AFP Photo

LONDON // A dramatic seven-hour operation in which two terror suspects – including a woman wearing an explosives belt – were killed in a Parisian suburb may have prevented another massacre in the French capital.

Eight people were arrested during the police raid, launched before dawn at a flat in a quiet working-class district of Saint-Denis, three kilometres from the Stade de France, one of the locations attacked in the bombings and shootings that left 129 dead and more than 400 wounded last Friday.

The declared target of the raid was Abdelhamid Abaaoud, 27, the suspected mastermind of last week's terrorist carnage in Paris. But Paris chief prosecutor Francois Molins told a press conference last night that neither he nor Salah Abdeslam, on the run since taking part in the attacks last Friday, was among those captured. There was speculation last night – supported by two senior intelligence officials quoted by The Washington Post – that the second, so far unidentified, suspect killed in the operation may turn out to be Abaaoud.

The French president Francois Hollande said the officers – more than 100 of whom took part – endured “terrifying” conditions in conducting the operation to “neutralise terrorists who had links to the perpetrators of Friday’s hideous crimes”. Part of the building collapsed in the ferocity of the battle.

Mr Molins revealed that the police fired 5,000 rounds in the fierce gun battle. He also spoke of a collection of weapons and ammunition, amounting to a “war arsenal”, that had been at the Paris attackers’ disposal.

A source close to the investigation was quoted by Reuters as saying the suspects’ new target was the commercial and shopping centre of La Defence, a cluster of futuristic skyscrapers that is a familiar feature of the Parisian skyline, easily reached from the north-eastern suburb of Saint-Denis.

Three of those arrested were inside the flat in which a man and the woman were killed, while the other five were detained outside. One of those arrested inside the flat was later treated under armed guard in hospital for an arm injury. Five police officers were also slightly injured and a police dog killed.

Previously, it had been thought that Abaaoud – who has been on the run since a deadly shoot-out between police and alleged terrorists in the Belgian city of Verviers in January – was with ISIL in Syria and had directed the Paris atrocities from there.

France’s BFM TV reported that the dead woman, France’s first known female suicide bomber, was Abaaoud’s cousin. Mr Molins said attempts to identify all those involved were continuing.

According to some reports, the woman was also the first to open fire with a Kalashnikov assault rifle on the police as officers approached the flat. The fact that she also had an explosives belt attached to her body added to speculation that the occupants of the flat were planning another mass-casualty attack.

It was separately disclosed yesterday that French police had foiled a plot to attack French military personnel at the country’s biggest naval base in the Mediterranean port of Toulon.

A 25-year-old man with terrorist links was arrested towards the end of last month but details were released by the interior ministry yesterday.

The state-owned France 24 network said the suspect told investigators he had had been in contact with a French ISIL militant in Syria who had ordered him to carry out an attack. During a surveillance operation, he took delivery of a parcel containing a combat knife and mask.

Judicial sources were quoted as saying he finally admitted he had planned to attack sailors from the base, home to 70 per cent of the French fleet and 20,000 military and civilian personnel, though he had had not formulated a detailed plan.

He had previously been monitored after two unsuccessful attempts to travel to Syria and the ministry said he was known to the authorities “because of his radicalisation and public support for jihadist ideology”. The French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle sailed from Toulon yesterday to reinforce French military units targeting ISIL in Syria and Iraq.

In Turkey, the official Anatolia news agency reported the arrest of eight ISIL suspects alleged to be trying to enter Europe posing as refugees. Counter-terror police detained them after they landed in Istanbul’s Ataturk airport from the Moroccan city of Casablanca on Tuesday.

One had a handwritten note describing a migration route from Istanbul to Germany via Greece, Serbia and Hungary, with bus and train journeys to follow a Mediterranean Sea crossing.

The eight reportedly claimed to be tourists but no reservations were found under their names at a hotel they claimed to be booked into. One of the suicide bombers in Paris was a man who had presented himself as a refugee, holding a Syrian passport, on arriving in Turkey last month.

As the police operation in Saint-Denis ended yesterday, officials confirmed that police acting on intelligence gleaned from mobile telephone data, witnesses, recent police raids and surveillance had believed they would find Abaaoud inside the apartment.

Among those detained, Javat Ben Dow, who is in is 30s, is the owner of the flat in which the group was hiding. The France 2 television station said he had been jailed in 2008 for homicide.

Immediately before being led away, he spoke to journalists at the scene, telling the Europe 1 radio station: “A friend asked me to put up two of his friends for three days. He said they were coming from Belgium. He asked for a favour and I did a favour. I did not know them at all ... I was not aware they were terrorists.”

He added that when he told the friend there were no mattresses at the flat, he was told this did not matter since his friends needed only water and somewhere to pray. “I knew nothing,” he said. “If I had known, do you think I’d have put them up?”

Some neighbouring homes in the area of the Rue de la Republique were evacuated during the siege and residents who could not be moved were ordered to stay indoors. Several spoke later of their terror amid several loud explosions and persistent exchanges of gunfire starting around 4.20am French time.

Abaaoud, of Moroccan origin, is 27 and grew up in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek, also the home of the two Abdeslam brothers involved in the Paris attacks – Brahim who blew himself up after raking diners on restaurant terraces with gunfire and Salah, who is on the run unless he was among those killed or captured yesterday.

Previously a petty criminal, Abaaoud served time in prison with Brahim Abselslam and is alleged to have led his own 13-year-old brother into service with ISIL. In 2013, he renounced his name, common practice among ISIL activists, instead calling himself Abou Omar Al Soussi after his family’s native south-western district of Morocco or Abou Omar Al Baljiki, a reference to Belgium.

Meanwhile, the French Muslim Council of France announced it was distributing a sermon condemning “without ambiguity” the Paris attack and all forms of terrorism to be read at France’s 2,500 mosques during tomorrow’s prayers.

* With agencies