French suspect’s family held in Paris attack probe

A French judicial official says a Seat auto with suspected links to gun attacks on Paris bars and restaurants was found by police in Montreuil, a suburb 6 kilometres (nearly 4 miles) east of the French capital.

According to French media, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he urged French president Hollande that there should be “drastic changes” to the country’s security policy following the Paris attacks.

Abdeslam is the older brother of 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam, who is now the subject of an worldwide manhunt.

French police released a photo of the suspect they were looking for in connection with the attacks, naming him as Salah Abdeslam and describing him as a “dangerous individual”. “There was no Interpol arrest warrant issued for this person”, the ministry said.

French President Francois Hollande vowed that France would wage “merciless” war on the Islamic State group and declared three days of national mourning that began Sunday.

“Those are all places that I go often to”, he said, still shaken with emotion.

One lived in central Brussels and one in Molenbeek, a poor, immigrant quarter of the Belgian capital already viewed as a possible launch pad for Islamist violence due to links with previous attacks in France and elsewhere.

Meanwhile the French newspaper Le Parisien reports that police closed a coffee shop run by Ibrahim Abdeslam earlier this month because neighbours had complained about a strong cannabis odour.

Almost all the French, Iraqi and USA officials providing information for this story spoke on condition of anonymity because they lack authorization to share details publicly.

The statement said two cars registered in Belgium were found in the Paris area, with one found near the Bataclan, where 89 people lost their lives. Panic ensued Sunday night as police abruptly cleared hundreds of mourners from the famed Place de la Republique square, where police said firecrackers sparked a false alarm. He was allegedly involved in a failed attack on the Belgian city of Verviers in January, the Times reported, citing a European security official.

“What is happening in Molenbeek can happen in other neighbourhoods if we don’t understand the scale of the problem”, she said.

They were the second wave of airstrikes by France against IS after attacks killed at least 129 people around Paris on Friday.

His father and 34-year-old brother have been taken into custody by police and a source close to the probe said investigators are now searching the homes of other friends and relatives of the killer.

They were detained after witness testimony and video footage pointed to a black Belgian rental auto that stopped for a border check on Saturday morning but was allowed to drive on, Van Sypt said.

Police arrested seven people in the German town of Aachen Tuesday.

Police have identified another man, Ahmed Almuhamed, as one of the attackers, who crossed into Serbia as an asylum seeker from Macedonia.

Mrs May confirmed that there were “tried and tested” measures for the military to respond to a marauding attack by terrorist gunmen.

Western intelligence agencies had attempted to track Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian citizen thought to be in Syria, but they weren’t able to locate him, the source told CNN on Tuesday.

“This was not his plan, that’s for sure”, she said. The Islamic State group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, took credit for the attacks.

An attacker at the Stade de France national stadium where three blew themselves up outside the stadium during a match, was carrying a Syrian passport in the name of Ahmad Al Mohammad, although authorities said the authenticity of the document had yet to be verified.