A few attackers used refugee crisis to ‘slip into’ France: PM

Hadfi has been identified as one of three attackers at the Stade de France stadium.

On Wednesday, French police used more than 5,000 rounds of bullets in the pre-dawn raid Wednesday in which a woman suicide bomber blew herself up and eight suspects were captured alive.

“Abdelhamid Abaaoud has just been formally identified…as having been killed during the raid” in a northern Paris suburb on Wednesday, the prosecutor said in a statement on Thursday.

Abaaoud, a 27-year-old Belgian, is thought to have organised the Paris attacks from Syria and was believed to be hiding in an apartment in Saint-Denis.

The raid was launched after a discarded mobile phone and tapped telephone conversations suggested Abaaoud may have been hiding there.

The prosecutor’s office said she is Hasna Aitboulahcen.

With France still reeling from the attacks, France’s lower house of parliament, the National Assembly, voted Thursday to extend a state of emergency for three months. “But we know and bear in mind that there is also a risk of chemical or bacteriological weapons”, Valls said in a Thursday speech to lawmakers.

The state of emergency will be in place from November 26.

Seven of the Paris attackers died on the same night as the attacks. It is believed the Belgian authorities are searching for Bilal Hadfi and Salah Abdeslam.

“It’s not only a security flaw, but a collective collapse”, said Brisard, who heads the French Center for Analysis of Terrorism.

The move came as fears ratcheted up across Europe of more hidden terror cells preparing similar attacks.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls said one more person has died, raising the death toll to 130, a tally that does not include any of the attackers.

France’s Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve has called on Europe to “wake up” to the threat posed by Islamic State and take steps to ensure the safety of citizens.

In at least 50 bombing raids, towns across Deir al-Zor province, including near the Iraqi border, were hit and dozens of vehicles and fuel oil tankers were destroyed, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. It contained a text message sent about 20 minutes after the massacre began.

As worldwide efforts to fight the Islamic State group stepped up, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Russian Federation was “sincere” in wanting to cooperate against IS, despite deep divisions on whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad should stay in power.

“We must not rule anything out”, Mr Valls said.

In September, a USA official told the BBC that the American government is increasingly certain that ISIS extremists are making and using chemical weapons, including mustard gas. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the issue publicly.

After five nights of raids, the interior ministry said police had detained 90 people and seized 174 weapons, including 18 military-style firearms, 84 rifles and 68 handguns.

Casert reported from Brussels.