Paris attacks ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud is dead

Most famously, an attack that he’s believed to have planned this summer on a high-speed train between Brussels and Paris was thwarted by three friends from Sacramento, Calif., who were on vacation, and other passengers.

The suspected architect of the Paris attacks was killed during a violent police raid conducted by Paris authorities in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis on Wednesday, French authorities say.

Despite reports that Islamic State operative Abdelhamid Abaaoud, 27, had been in the apartment and was killed in the Wednesday morning shootout with police, there was no official confirmation overnight. “The police didn’t kill her, she blew herself up”, he told Reuters.

The state of emergency expands police powers to carry out arrests and searches, and allows authorities to forbid the movement of people and vehicles at specific times and places.

Terrified residents awoke to gunfire and explosions as a SWAT team swooped in and “neutralized” what Paris Prosecutor Francois Molins called a “new team of terrorists” that appeared ready for a new attack.

Abaaoud, a 28-year-old Belgian militant who had boasted of mounting attacks in Europe for the Islamic State, was accused of orchestrating Friday’s coordinated bombings and shootings in the French capital.

The Paris prosecutor’s office identified the other as Abaaoud through papillary prints, which include patterns on fingers, palms and the soles of the feet.

Also on Thursday, Belgian authorities launched at least six anti-terror raids in relation to the Paris attacks and suicide bomber Bilal Hadfi, CNN reported.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the bloc’s cherished policy of passport-free travel in the so-called Schengen zone would be “called into question” if Europe “doesn’t live up to its responsibilities”.

“Terrorism hit France not because of what it is doing in Iraq and Syria… but for what it is”, Valls told the lower house of Parliament.

French investigators tracked down the alleged ringleader of last week’s Paris bloodshed after receiving a startling tipoff: The Islamic militant wasn’t in Syria but in Europe, plotting yet another attack. Salah Abdeslam – an eighth suspected attacker who is on the run – and an unidentified “ninth attacker” were also believed to be in the apartment on Wednesday. Abdeslam was described by Molins as a key operative in the attacks.

Mr Molins said investigators were led to the Saint-Denis apartment by evidence including a mobile phone found in a dustbin outside the Bataclan concert hall, where 89 of the victims of Friday’s atrocity died.

French President Francois Hollande is going to Washington and Moscow next week to push for a stronger global coalition against IS.

He said he escaped to Syria “despite being chased after by so many intelligence agencies”.

Policemen stands guard at a crossing in Saint-Denis, France, on November 18.

Authorities are using the state of emergency declared by Hollande to carry out a widespread clampdown on potential terrorist threats, detaining dozens of people, putting more than 100 others under house arrest and seizing an alarming array of weapons.