France says Belgian masterminded attacks

On both sides of the Atlantic, the fast-moving investigation into the deadly Paris terrorist attacks steadily accumulated clues Sunday: a vehicle discovered in the Parisian suburbs with a cache of weapons.

It added that the plot “may indicate that the group has developed the capability to launch more complex operations in the West”, as opposed to so-called “lone wolf” attacks or assaults by smaller or less sophisticated groups.

The attacks “were prepared overseas and involved a team situated in Belgian territory and who may have benefited from… complicity in France”, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said after talks on Sunday with his Belgian counterpart, Jan Jambon.

A French official has identified the suspected mastermind as Belgian Abdelhamid Abaaoud, and says he is believed linked to thwarted attacks on a Paris-bound high-speed train and Paris area church.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility.

There were 24 people involved in the operation, they said, 19 attackers and five others in charge of logistics and planning. A Brussels parking ticket found inside led police to at least one of the arrests in Belgium, a French police official said.

World leaders have been offering their support to France. A man carrying the passport in Mr. Mohammad’s name passed through the Greek island of Leros on October 3 and the Serbian town of Presevo, near the border with Macedonia, on October 7, apparently posing as an asylum seeker, the authorities in Greece and Serbia have said.

But the complexity and coordination of the latest attacks suggest a growing and ominous sophistication among terrorist networks, U.S. and French officials said.

French warplanes pounded the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’s (ISIS) stronghold in Syria’s Raqa on Sunday, destroying a command post and a training camp, the defence ministry said. “The working assumption is that these guys were very security aware, and they assumed they would be under a few level of observation, and acted accordingly”, said a senior European counterterrorism official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential information.

Mostefai had a record of petty crime and had been flagged in 2010 for ties to Islamic radicalism, the Paris prosecutor said. All three gunmen in the January attacks on the Charlie Hebdo newspaper and a kosher supermarket in Paris were French. Mr. Amimour, 28, was born in Paris and lived in Drancy, a Parisian suburb, the statement said. “The one who targets the Republic, the Republic will catch him, will be implacable”. “That’s what struck me: his childish face, very determined, cold, calm, frightening”, Pearce said.

The strike came as president Francois Hollande vowed to crush the extremist group who massacred 129 people on Friday night.

Eventually, he made his way to Paris, where he was one of three men who blew themselves up at the Stade de France. French troops have deployed by the thousands and tourist sites remain shuttered in one of the most visited cities on Earth. But in a sign of just how shaken people are, the sound of firecrackers at Place de la Republique, where mourners were standing in quiet solidarity, sent scores fleeing in panic before they realized it was a false alarm. “Whoever starts running starts everyone else running”, said a city councilwoman, Alice Carton, who was at the square. “The sirens and screaming are a source of fear”.

Sarkozy also said all people coming back from Iraq and Syria should be “put in prison” or expelled if they have double citizenship.