Prosecutors identify man killed in raid after Paris attacks

A suicide bomber killed in a police raid following the November Paris terror attacks has been identified, the prosecutor’s office announced on Thursday.

ReutersBelgian police stage a raid, in search of suspected muslim fundamentalists linked to the deadly attacks in Paris, in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek, November 16.

Akrouh had traveled to Syria at the beginning of 2015, a French official said.

It is thought the pair were preparing another terror strike in Paris’ La Défense business district after the November 13 attacks that killed 130 in bars, restaurants and the Bataclan concert hall.

According to the Paris Prosecutor’s office, Akrouh is a Belgian-Moroccan born on August 27, 1990 in Belgium. He had been hiding there with Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the alleged ringleader of the attacks.

An arrest warrant has also been issued for Salah Abdeslam, who travelled to Paris from Belgium with several of the now dead assailants and may possibly have been supposed to blow himself up in another attack but instead fled back to Belgium and subsequently vanished. Police believe the flat was used to build explosives.

Abaaoud’s cousin, Hasna Ait Boulahcen, was also killed in the raid. Mr Akrouh was convicted alongside Mr Abaaoud, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

At the stade de France football stadium, Bilal Hadfi was accompanied by two other suicide bombers who entered Europe on October 3 on the Greek island of Leros with a group of migrants.

News of Akrouh’s identification came a week after a senior Belgian counterterrorism official said that two men still on the loose had a more senior role in the Paris attacks than Abaaoud, and gave orders to the Paris attackers in calls from Belgium’s capital, Brussels.

Fifty people out of some 400 injured in the worst attack on France since World War Two are still in hospital, with a few of those still in intensive care units, Health Minister Marisol Touraine said earlier this week.