Massive police raid foils second Paris terror attack

Belgian authorities had suspected Abaaoud of being the head of a terror cell which was smashed in January in the wake of the attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Richard Burr, R-North Carolina, said there was no direct evidence of encryption, but that authorities had concluded it was used because they have uncovered no evidence of conversations among the plotters.

France and Germany were playing a soccer friendly at the Stade de France when Friday’s attacks took place.

Authorities said three men were arrested in the apartment.

“We just now have to be ready for anything, any kind of an attack….”

PARIS Suspected Islamist militants uncovered in a Paris suburb by police were planning an attack on the French capital’s La Defense business district, a source close to the investigation and two police sources said on Wednesday.

Undated picture of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the presumed mastermind of the Paris attacks.

Official sources in France have also identified a woman who blew herself up during the raid: 26-year-old Hasna Ait Boulahcen, a relative of Abaaoud.

A clip of the six-minute video provided by the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks militant groups, shows a brief glimpse of Times Square and then a suicide bomber holding what appears to be a trigger. Friends of her family in their hometown of Aulnay-sous-Bois, on the northeastern outskirts of Paris, said she had lived there until recently. And the Paris prosecutor’s office told CNN that police were searching the mother’s home.

‘This new team was planning an attack on La Defense’.

Until Wednesday morning, officials had said Abaaoud was in Syria.

Western intelligence agencies have been tracking Abaaoud for months, but he has proved elusive, bragging that he could move undetected between Syria and Europe.

Mr Molins said: “The identities of the people who were arrested in this building are not absolutely certain but Abaaoud and Salah Abdeslam are not part of the people who have been arrested”.

‘It is impossible to tell you who was arrested. But a spokesperson for the Dutch justice ministry said the search for Abdeslam had not expanded to the Netherlands, the news website NU.nl reported.

“We won’t know what would have happened if we didn’t cancel it”, he said.

A man in St. Denis told reporters that he had rented out the besieged apartment to two people last week.

Investigators there detained nine people in raids across the country Thursday. NAVAL BUILDUP: Britain said one of the Royal Navy’s most advanced warships, the HMS Defender, will support a French aircraft carrier that is on its way to help operations against IS militants in Syria.

7 people were arrested.

At the President’s request, France’s lower house voted Thursday to extend the state of emergency for three more months.

France has been pounding the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa with airstrikes since Sunday, stepping up its own military efforts as the French people grieve the loss of more than 120 killed in the terrorist attacks last week, for which ISIS has claimed responsibility.

Hollande will meet Putin in Moscow on November 26, two days after seeing US President Barack Obama in Washington.

Although Hollande admitted that a link between the terrorist threat and the influx of migrant exists, he stressed that the refugees are victims too, “running from Iraq and Syria because they are attacked by the very same people who are attacking us today“.

And France’s interior minister, Cazeneuve, will press the case for more concerted European action – including bolstering borders – during an upcoming European Union justice council meeting in Brussels.