Paris attacks: German police arrest five in western city Aachen

Police spokesman Werner Schneider says the trio were arrested Tuesday morning by a SWAT team in Alsdorf, just northeast of Aachen and near the border with Belgium. Other German media quoted a witness as saying police made the arrests in front of a job centre.

A French security official said anti-terror intelligence officials had identified Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian of Moroccan descent, as chief architect of the attacks on a rock concert, a soccer game and popular nightspots in one of Paris’ trendiest districts.

Mr Hollande said the “acts of war” were decided and planned in Syria, which he said was “the biggest factory of terrorism the world has ever known and the global community is still too divided and too incoherent”.

The minister said “there does not appear to be a close connection to the Paris attacks”, speaking at a Berlin press conference.

European search efforts are focusing on Belgian-born Frenchman Salah Abdeslam, 23, who investigators say escaped back to Belgium on Saturday after the attacks.

It added that police had conducted further operations in the area which it could not detail “for tactical reasons”, and that “two more people were arrested by special forces in Alsdorf”.

The police confirmed that at least three of those arrested were foreign nationals. Mr. Abdeslam reportedly spent several days in Germany in September.

They were all suspected of having ties to Abdeslam, who is the subject of a French wanted notice over Friday night’s attacks that killed 129.

News site Spiegel Online reported that the German police alert was sparked by a supermarket employee who reported spotting a suspect who resembled Abdeslam.