French raid apprehends eight terrorists, mastermind killed

French Raid Apprehends Eight Terrorists, Mastermind Killed

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, French police raided an apartment in the Parisian suburb St. Denis on a tip-off that it was the hideout of Paris attacks mastermind Abdelhamid Abaaoud. The violent raid left the building in tatters while eight terrorists were apprehended alive.

However, the main suspect, Abaaoud, did not survive and was killed during the raid. One woman also died in the attack, believed to have been Abaaoud’s cousin. A local witness told the media she detonated a suicide jacket as police were reeling in close to the apartment.

“She had a bomb, that’s for sure. The police didn’t kill her, she blew herself up,” a local resident told Reuters.

In addition to being the mastermind of the Paris attacks, which the police first believed were planned in Iraq and Syria, Abaaoud had also planned another attack, possibly next week, to blow up a high-rise in La Defense business district in St. Denis. The high-rise building is home to some of the top banks and organizations in France. That plan, police believe, has been neutralized, as the culprits have either been killed in the assault or taken into custody.

“A new team of terrorists has been neutralized,” Paris Prosecutor Francois Molins told reporters on Wednesday evening.

According to Molins, approximately 5,000 rounds of munition were fired by law enforcement forces while some heavy machinery was also used. The apartment, peppered with bullets from the front and the inside and badly damaged from the suicide bombing, is destroyed with the possibility of the whole building collapsing.

Abaaoud was believed to have been in ISIS-controlled territory. However, the latest tip-off identified him at the raided apartment. This changes the line of investigation that the attacks were planned outside France. However, the authorities believe that the attacks were organized outside France in neighboring Belgium. Abaaoud was a Belgian national.

Another accomplice of the attacks, Salah Abdselem, is still at large, and a high-alert search operation has been initiated since his identification as one of the terrorists. The ninth attacker, who is believed as the driver of the outfit, is also still missing.

In another incident of violence, three ISIS affiliates stabbed a Jewish teacher in Marseilles after instigating a fight. One of the terrorists was wearing an ISIS t-shirt, and another had the video of Mohamed Merah, a homegrown Islamist militant who killed seven people in attacks in southern France in 2012, on his cellphone.

France has urged the international community to step up their military activities against ISIS and other jihadist organizations in Syria and Iraq. The French Air Force has target ISIS strongholds including its self-proclaimed capital of Raqqa since Monday in three air strikes. Russia is also targeting ISIS in retaliation for the Metrojet airline that exploded in mid-air over the Sanai Peninsula, possibly caused by ISIS, who has claimed responsibility.

Meanwhile, Belgian authorities have launched six new raids in the Brussels region linked to another suicide bomber, Bilal Hadfi. The Molenbeek suburb, believed to be a breeding ground for extremist groups, is the focus of the raids, and Belgian authorities are confident that they will be able to apprehend suspicious individuals who could be acting on ISIS’s behest.