Manhunt For Paris terror suspect

Officials have said Salah Abdeslam – the suspected eighth Paris attacker – is a longstanding associate of Abaaoud.

He also revealed that the victims were of 19 different nationalities and suggested the country’s state of emergency could be extended for three months.

Hollande announced on Monday he would create 5,000 jobs in the security forces, boost prison service staff by 2,500, beef up the depleted unit of anti-terrorism magistrates and avoid cuts in defence spending before 2019. Bruguiere said Abaaoud would certainly have been in contact with Baghdadi on an attack like this.

“We are not engaged in a war of civilizations”.

French authorities didn’t immediately disclose the nature of the Belgian jihadi’s purported connection to a pair of foiled terrorism incidents earlier this year in France.

French police released his photo and warned that he is “dangerous”.

He said radicals come from all over the world, not just this small Brussels neighborhood.

Yet time and again, investigations after attacks like those that killed 129 people in Paris have uncovered tales of workaday Arab immigrant lives, assimilated to the profane daily cares and pleasures of European cities, that have turned, unseen to family and friends, into explosions of pious, suicidal fanaticism.

In Belgium, the pair were charged “with a terrorist act and participation in the activities of a terrorist group”, while five others held at the weekend were freed without charge, the federal prosecutor’s office said.

After he left police custody, Mohamed Abdeslam told reporters that his family couldn’t believe that both of his brothers were jihadists.

Ismael Omar Mostefai has been identified as one of the three suicide bombers armed with assault rifles at the Bataclan concert hall, where at least 89 people were killed.

Ibrahim Abdeslam, the brother of Salah, was identified by prosecutors as the man who rented a Seat vehicle used in the attacks. Now, his whereabouts are unknown.

He is believed to be linked to thwarted attacks on a Paris-bound high-speed train and a church in the Paris area, an official said.

BRUSSELS, Nov 17 (Reuters) – Two weeks ago, the mayor of Molenbeek ordered the closure of a neighbourhood bar where Brussels police had found young men dealing drugs and smoking dope over the summer. Two were Frenchmen living in Brussels.

A Foreign Affairs spokeswoman said later on Monday that one Canadian was injured.

“That’s correct”, a spokesman for the prosecutor said when asked if the operation targeted Abdeslam, adding however that he was unable to confirm whether the suspect was actually in a house surrounded by police in the Molenbeek district of the Belgian capital.

This “car was hired by Salah Abdeslam”, suspected of being one of the perpetrators of the attacks and for whom police have an global arrest warrant, AFP has learned from police sources.

It was after the break-up of that terror cell in the eastern Belgian city of Verviers in January, shortly after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, that Abaaoud’s name began to widely circulate.

Abaaoud apparently knows Salah Abdeslam, who also has roots in Molenbeek and who is wanted for allegedly taking part in the Paris attacks, and has appeared in Belgian police files linked to Abdeslam’s brother Brahim, who police say blew himself up outside a bar in Paris.

– The Paris attacks were planned in Syria and organized in Belgium, French President Francois Hollande said.

French police carried out 128 searches and detained 10 people for questioning overnight from Monday to Tuesday. The official did not specify who those three attackers were.

French officials believe that six of the people directly involved in the attacks had spent time in Syria, BFMTV reported Monday.

Not much is known about the third suicide bomber at the Stade de France.

Swedish security officials said they received a threat of attacks on Tuesday against the prime minister, the government and Parliament by email.

The senator, who was briefed by France’s interior minister, told CNN that the man was carrying the passport and also a registration document for refugee status by Greek authorities.

Al-Mohammad is the name on a Syrian passport found with the remains of one of the attackers, though the man’s identity has not yet been verified. And in Washington, transit police stepped up patrols to safeguard the city’s mass transit system.

Panic ensued Sunday night as police abruptly cleared mourners from the Place de la Republique square, where police said firecrackers sparked a false alarm.

The Department of Homeland Safety said it had no “specific credible information of an attack on the USA homeland”.

Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan said he would be surprised if the group doesn’t have additional attacks in preparation.

“That’s what struck me: his childish face, very determined, cold, calm, frightening”, Pearce said.

At least three of those killed in the Paris attacks were Belgian and the country launched its own anti-terrorist investigation into the events as a result.

“It can be that a terrorist was infiltrated there (through the refugee route)”.

But the senior Belgian counterterrorism official said the trail for Abaaoud has gone cold, and it is possible he was able to return to Syria from Greece.