European Union agrees to tighten checks on all travellers at Schengen borders

Numerous attackers lived in Belgium and USA authorities have said some were on U.S.no-fly lists.

In response to the attacks, police carried out raids across France for a fifth night.

Also on Friday, the lawyer for Abaaoud’s father said her client regretted that his son had died in Wednesday’s shoot-out with police.

In the aftermath of the Paris attacks EU nations agreed today to immediately tighten checks on all travellers, including European nationals, at the external borders of the passport-free Schengen area, European sources said.

The EU agency for border controls, Frontex, is to get a stronger mandate to contribute to the fight against terrorism, the draft text says.

While Abaaoud was quickly identified by French investigators as the likely mastermind of the Paris attacks, it was originally thought he had co-ordinated them from Syria where he was fighting with IS.

He added the members also agreed to “considerably strengthen” means to cooperate to combat extremism.

Luxembourg Justice Minister Etienne Schneider, who chaired the emergency meeting, said quick and strengthened action “is not an option but an obligation”.

One of the other two bodies was confirmed on Thursday as belonging to Abaaoud, 28.

No other details were released. The Paris Assaults Witnesses to the assault on Paris recount their experiences, painting an image of the day darkness fell on the City of Light.

Since the attacks, requests for information about joining the French army have surged. French intelligence officials had believed Abaaoud was hiding in Syria.

Montreuil was where a black Seat vehicle believed to have been used in the attack on the restaurants was later found.

A week after their city was shaken to the core by a bloody series of attacks, Parisians turned out in their thousands Friday to pay tribute to the dead and express defiance at those who would try to challenge the French way of life.

The call is going out on social media under the Twitter hashtag 21h20 – or 9:20 p.m., the time the attacks began on November 13. But French artists and cultural figures urged people to respond to the tragedy with an outpouring of “noise and light”.

A handbag found in the debris after the raid of the apartment contained a passport in the name of Hasna Ait Boulahcen, authorities said. The identity of the third body has not been announced.

Under gray skies and rain Friday, Parisians marked the one-week anniversary since the bloodbath. A gathering planned for Friday at France’s oldest mosque to show inter-community solidarity was cancelled because of security fears.

The name of the second stadium bomber was not provided by prosecutors.

“If we make full use of the tools given us by Schengen… our external borders will be protected in a more efficient way”, the EU Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship Commissioner, Dimitris Avramopoulos, told a briefing on Wednesday.

The measure, approved in the National Assembly on Thursday, now goes to the French Senate for expected final backing Friday.

“I think we need accelerated progress on firearms”, Ms. May said before the meeting. Officials have said some may have taken advantage of the large influx of refugees from Syria over the summer to evade normal border controls.

Of the more than 350 people wounded in the attack, scores are in critical condition. France will “remain a country of freedoms”, he said.

French police official Jean-Marc Falcone, speaking on France-Info radio, said he was unable to say if Abdeslam, whose brother, Brahim, blew himself up in the attacks, could be back on French territory.

“We can’t say anything about the exact geographic situation of that individual”, he said. A bill to extend a state of emergency until February and give the police new powers goes before the upper house of the French parliament later on Friday.

At least one Paris attacker, Salah Abdeslam, crossed into Belgium the morning after the attacks.