Heavy gunfire erupts as French police raid apartment

The assault began before dawn Wednesday at a decrepit squat in a close suburb of Paris when scores of French police officers stormed a third-floor apartment in search of their elusive quarry: Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian suspected of organizing last week’s deadly attacks by the Islamic State in Paris.

Authorities arrested seven people, while five police officers suffered minor injuries in the operation which turned into a seven-hour stand-off between security forces and a group of people holed up in an apartment.

Belgian authorities suspect him of also helping organize and finance a terror cell in the eastern city of Verviers that was broken up in an armed police raid on January 15, in which two of his presumed accomplices were killed.

Molins said details about the raid in the Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis are still being investigated but a total of eight people were arrested as a result of the police activity.

The Washington Post, quoting two senior intelligence officials, says the dead man is Abaaoud, who was last monitored in Syria earlier this year.

Saint Denis, a multicultural and multi-religious banlieue, is a residential area where people from different backgrounds live together in peace and harmony.

He said: “At this time, I’m not in a position to give a precise and definitive number for the people who died, nor their identities, but there are at least two dead people”.

The message will condemn such acts “unambiguously”, the French Muslim Council (CFCM) said. Two have not been identified and the investigation continues, Molins said. As of Wednesday afternoon, seven suspects – including three in one apartment, the person who loaned the apartment to the suspected terrorists and his friend – ended up in custody from this operation alone. Over the a year ago, previous efforts to capture Abaaoud, a Belgium man who fled to Syria but recently returned to Europe, have failed. It’s no coincidence that this group closely resembles the group of terrorists who launched attacks on Friday night.

Until on Wednesday morning, officials had said Mr Abaaoud was in Syria. 5,000 rounds of ammunition were said to be fired in the shootout. That raid led them to another apartment on the same street. “I never thought terrorists could have hidden here”.

The attacks have put France on edge and the raid Wednesday only heightened fears that there could be more cells preparing to strike.

Another of the suspects is understood to be Salah Abdeslam, who is the subject of an global arrest warrant after Friday’s terror attacks – which left 129 people dead.

“A new team of terrorists was neutralized and all indications are that given their arms, their organizational structure and their determination, the commando could have struck”, Molins said.

He said intelligence had led investigators to believe Abaaoud, a leading Islamic State extremist, could have been in the apartment.

The bill is to be debated by both houses of Parliament on Thursday and Friday and expected to be voted on by the end of the week.

Across France, police have carried out 414 raids since Friday, making 60 arrests and seizing 75 weapons, including 11 military-style firearms, the Interior Ministry said.