Paris Attacks: Belgian Abdelhamid Abaaoud Is reportedly mastermind

He said: “It seems that one individual has been arrested by special forces in that particular part of Belgium using tear gas – throwing it through a roof window, and then seemingly according to reports there, pulling one individual out of an apartment”.

Here is a look at the men behind France’s worst-ever terror attacks, which struck a concert venue, bars, restaurants, and a stadium.

However, Belgian public broadcaster RTBF said the wanted man – who rented a auto which was used to carry gunmen to the Bataclan theatre in Paris – had not been arrested.

Valls said the French authorities would use every means at their disposal to counter the Islamist threat, adding that mosques harboring extremists would be shuttered and foreigners expelled if they “held unacceptable views against the republic”.

Abaaoud grew up in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek, which has emerged as a key focus of investigations into the Paris atrocity.

An attacker who blew himself up outside the Stade de France had been found with a Syrian passport in the name of Ahmad Al Mohammad, a 25-year-old born in Idlib, a city in the north-west of the war-ravaged country.

One of the attackers at the Bataclan had been identified – through fingerprints – as a 30-year-old with a criminal history who was “considered a radicalised person and had a surveillance file”.

“They also land in districts which are breeding grounds for radicalisation”, she said, before taking a dig at her socialist predecessor: “One should have been firmer from the start”.

Abdeslam is one of three brothers suspected of involvement in the Paris attacks, one of whom – reportedly called Ibraham – died in the Bataclan and the other was arrested in Belgium.

At least one key suspect is on the loose.

Saleh Abdelslam, 26, was one of three men in a getaway vehicle, headed for France’s border with Belgium, when police pulled them over after daybreak Saturday.

IS on Saturday claimed responsibility for the attacks in a statement issued online.

The stand-off came as Belgian national Abdelhamid Abaaoud was named the suspected mastermind of the Paris attacks.

In the same interview, he described Belgium as “a member of the crusader coalition attacking the Muslims of Iraq and [Syria]”. An unnamed official told the Associated Press that Abaaoud also was linked to the attempted attack on a train from Amsterdam to Paris in August that was stopped by passengers. The official also said Abaaoud may have helped plan the foiled terrorist attack on the Saint Cyr-et-Sainte-Julitte Church in Villejuif, a suburb of Paris, last April.

Eric van der Sypt, a spokesman for the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office, said the operation didn’t yield any arrests but confirmed that its aim was to find Abdeslam.

None of these details have been corroborated by officials of France or other Western intelligence agencies. A Turkish official said police there had twice warned France about Mostefai. All three gunmen in the January attacks on the Charlie Hebdo newspaper and a kosher supermarket in Paris were French.

Floral tributes the victims of the terrorist attacks in Paris, outside the French Embassy, in London.

Imagine – A German-Italian pianist dragged his piano close to the concert hall where more than 100 people were killed and played John Lennon’s “Imagine” for the people gathered there.

In the footage the terror group also threatens an attack in Washington. My family and I are very moved by what’s happened.