French interior minister calls for a few mosques to be shut down

France’s airstrikes on Sunday night are said to have destroyed a jihadi training camp and a “munitions dump” in Raqqa, where intelligence officials in Iraq believe the Paris attacks were hatched.

French police investigating the coordinated attacks on Paris last week carried out more than 150 raids across France overnight, arresting 23 people and placing 104 people under house arrest, according to the French interior minister.

The attacks, carried out at a stadium where the French national soccer team was playing Germany, a concert hall where the USA band Eagles of Death Metal was playing, and at restaurants and cafes, were prepared in Belgium and the suspects received help in France, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said on Sunday.

Since the attacks by French Islamists at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket in Paris at the beginning of the year, attention has been drawn upon the country’s Muslim population.

Across France and throughout Europe, people paused for a minute’s silence at noon French time (11am GMT) in memory of the victims. And there are people speculating – experts speculating – that this attack was planned here, the logistics were done here. The arrest warrant for 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam – brother of bomber Brahim – describes him as very unsafe and warns people not to intervene if they see him. “It is a porous border between France and Belgium”.

A French police officer stops a auto at the Franco-Italian border to check vehicles and verify the identity of travellers in Menton, France, yesterday. The suspected mastermind of the Paris attacks has been named as Abdelhamid Abaaoud, according to the AP.

Mr Cazeneuve laid out increased security measures across the country after t he Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the wave of attacks in Paris that killed at least 127 people, and said France would remain at the “top of the list” of its targets.

“Whoever starts running starts everyone else running”, said Alice Carton, city council member who was at the square.