France to step up anti-IS bombing after Paris attacks: Hollande

The official, who has direct knowledge of the police investigation but is not authorized to speak publicly about the probe, said Abaaoud also is suspected of overseeing two thwarted attacks earlier this year on a Paris church and a Paris-bound train.

According to the prosecutor’s office, Amimour was known to the anti-terrorist service for having been charged with association with terrorist criminals. RTBF later said one person had been detained.

Police said seven attackers died – six of them by detonating suicide vests and one from police gunfire – leaving a suspect dubbed the “eighth attacker” potentially at large.

But as France intensified its air strikes on suspected IS power bases in Syria, police struggled to achieve a breakthrough in their hunt for those linked to France’s deadliest attacks since World War II. Police say the 26-year old rented the auto that carried hostage-takers to the Paris theatre where 89 people were killed. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing. Police and other Belgian officials said they could not confirm any significant arrests at the scene.

French authorities have identified several suspected attackers, most with links to France or Belgium.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the gun and bomb attacks on a stadium, a concert hall and Paris cafés that left 129 dead and wounded 350 people, 99 of them seriously.

“The abject attacks that hit us on Friday were prepared overseas and mobilized a team in Belgium that benefited… from help in France”, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told reporters after meeting his Belgian counterpart in Paris.

France has carried out air raids against IS in Syria since September but stepped up its raids after Friday’s attacks, with 10 warplanes dropping 20 bombs on jihadist targets in Raqqa on Sunday.

The newspaper said police also found ammunition in one of the homes, including bullets used in Kalashnikov assault rifles of the kind used by a few of the Paris attackers.

Belgian police arrested at least one person after a four-hour siege at a house in the Brussels district of Molenbeek but failed to find Saleh Abdeslam, a 26-year-old Frenchman based in the Belgian capital for whom an global arrest warrant has been issued. They spoke on condition of anonymity.

“It was a simple check”.

Tantalizing clues about the extent of the plot have emerged from Baghdad, where senior Iraqi officials told the AP that France and other countries had been warned Thursday of an imminent attack.

France was the first European country to join the US-led coalition to battle IS in Iraq and Syria in a move to halt the Islamist group’s offensive in the region where it had seized major regions.

“There will be no respite, no truce”, stressed a resolute Hollande.