Woman who died in Paris raid had been under police surveillance

In a statement released Thursday, the Paris prosecutor’s office said that Abaaoud’s body was found in the Saint-Denis building riddled with bullets.

The news that Abaaoud was indeed one of those who died in the Saint Denis raid of course creates new concerns among intelligence agencies. “There were many people who didn’t take it seriously, but effectively it was confirmed”.

“We have strong reason to believe that this cell was about to commit massive terror attacks in France”, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Thursday, speaking on public broadcaster France 2. The prosecutor later added that it was unclear whether Abaaoud had detonated a suicide belt. Five officers suffered slight wounds, while a police dog and two suspected terrorists died.

Police also found a cellphone in a dustbin outside the Bataclan with a text message sent saying: “We’re ready let’s go”.

Her brother said she had suddenly become radicalised about six months ago.

“Where is your boyfriend?” an officer demanded, according to an official.

“He’s not my boyfriend!”

The bodies recovered in the raid were badly mangled, with part of Aitboulahcen’s spine landing on a police vehicle, slowing down the identification process, according to one of the officials. Eight people were arrested in the raid. “The investigation will establish precisely how this Belgo-Moroccan was involved”. But while residents of that Paris suburb told CNN they’d seen Abaaoud himself out recently and at a local mosque, authorities didn’t know for sure where he was. It’s thought he organised various other attacks including the foiled armed assault on a train in France in August.

He said Paris had received “no information” from other European countries about his arrival on the continent.

Police searched homes in Brussels and arrested one person in the hunt for the terrorists behind last week’s attacks as French forensics experts picked through human remains in the ruins of a suspected hideout on the edge of Paris.

Authorities in Belgium on Thursday launched six raids in Molenbeek and other areas of Brussels linked to another of the suicide bombers, Bilal Hadfi, a French citizen who blew himself up outside the soccer stadium.

Abaaoud’s death, though, does not mean investigators’ work is over. He had bragged in the Islamic State group’s English-language magazine that he was able to slip in and out of Europe undetected.

Abaaoud was wanted in Belgium, where he was sentenced in absentia this year to 20 years’ imprisonment for serving as an IS recruiter and kidnapping his younger brother, Younes.

Authorities had zeroed in on that location in Saint-Denis after picking up phone conversations indicating Abaaoud’s relative might be there, a Belgian counterterrorism official said.

At least 129 people were killed in the shootings and suicide bombings that targeted a concert hall, bars and restaurants and the Stade de France national stadium, Europe’s second deadliest terror attack in history after the 2004 Madrid bombings.

He spoke as lawmakers voted to extend a state of emergency for three months. The bill now goes to the French upper house, or Senate, for an expected vote Friday.

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.

There have been so many of these police swoops – several hundred since Friday – that one has to ask whether they are simply taking this opportunity to bring in all sorts of jihadist suspects or whether the list of people they are looking for is much larger than we might suppose.

And France’s interior minister, Cazeneuve, will press the case for more concerted European action – including bolstering borders – during an upcoming European Union justice council meeting in Brussels. But two US officials said that many, though not all, of those identified were on the U.S.no-fly list.

France has stepped up its airstrikes against extremists in Syria, and French military spokesman Col. Gilles Jaron said Thursday that French forces have destroyed 35 Islamic State targets in Syria since the attacks on Paris.