Belgian police launch new operation after Paris attacks

Salah Abdeslam, who remains on the run, booked two rooms in his name at the Hotel Alfortville, situated in a quiet area outside the French capital, Le Point said. The mastermind is said to be a Belgian national linked to thwarted earlier attacks on a train and a French church.

British police and spies are working closely with counterparts in France and Belgium to identify and pursue those behind the massacre.

“The awful attacks that were directed against us on Friday were prepared overseas by a group of individuals based in Belgium who, as the investigation will show, benefited from accomplices in France”, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said in Paris on Sunday.

The investigation into the attack spread beyond France on Saturday as Belgian police arrested several suspects in Brussels, including one who was in Paris at the time of the carnage. French President Francois Hollande vowed that France would wage “merciless” war on the Islamic State group and declared three days of national mourning that began Sunday.

– There is a “strong presumption” that a second suspect linked to the Paris attacks is still at large, an official source close to the investigation told CNN. The strikes hit an ISIS command center and a militant training center, the Ministry of Defense said in a statement. The jets launched from sites in Jordan and the Persian Gulf, in co-ordination with USA forces. In addition to those killed, the attacks wounded 350 people, 99 of them seriously.

Belgian authorities stepped up security and intelligence- gathering a year ago after a French gunman killed four people at Brussels’ Jewish Museum.

As efforts were being made to capture those behind the attacks, more details have emerged of those who carried them out.

Belgium-born Abdelhamid Abaaoud, 27, was said to have overseen the deadly suicide bombings and gun attacks at a football stadium, a concert hall and several restaurants in Paris on November 13. Amimour was placed under judicial supervision, but dropped off authorities’ radar in 2013 and an worldwide arrest warrant was issued.

Many nations also find themselves at heightened terror alerts after ISIS released a video promising more attacks and the Central Intelligence Agency director said Paris wasn’t likely a “one-off event”.

Prosecutors said one of the killers had been stopped and fingerprinted in Greece last month, fuelling speculation the Islamic State had taken advantage of the recent influx of refugees fleeing the Middle East to slip militants into Europe.

Another, said to have been identified by the print on a recovered finger, was 29-year-old Frenchman Ismael Mostefai, who had a record of petty crime and had been flagged in 2010 for ties to Islamic radicalism.

– Little is known about the two suicide bombers who attacked the Stade de France with Hadfi.

At least one key suspect is on the loose. Investigators have no news about the third brother.

Mohamed Amri and Hamza Attou say they answered an unexpected call from Abdeslam at around 2am and helped him innocently. By then, hours had passed since authorities identified Abdeslam as the renter of a Volkswagen Polo that carried hostage takers to the Paris theater where so many died.

“Indeed there was a major exercise just this summer on the streets of London testing what their response would be to an attack of this sort”. “We are going to live with this terrorist threat for a long time”.

The Home Secretary said Britain’s security plan for tackling terrorist attacks will be looked at again after the Paris terror plot and pledged that any “lessons” would be learnt.

He also pledged to hire 5,000 more police within the next two years, to freeze cuts in military personnel through 2019, and to introduce other bills that would stiffen jail terms for arms trafficking and make it easier to deport suspected terrorists. The new information highlighted growing fears of possible homegrown terrorism in France, a country that has exported more jihadis than any other in Europe.

In Alsdorf, Germany, two women and three men were arrested overnight after indications of involvement in the Paris attacks, said Iris Ruster, spokeswoman of Aachen, Germany, police.