Officials launch manhunt in Europe for Paris’s ‘eighth attacker’

French and Belgian officials on the hunt for the man believed to have been involved in the attacks, Abdeslam Salah, is believed to have been born in Belgium and could be as young as 19-years-old. The other was found near the eastern suburb of Montreuil overnight with two AK-47s inside.

Yet Europeans and their governments were confronting a chilling reality at home.

US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter and French Defence Minister Jean-Yves le Drian discussed by telephone the actions they are taking in response to Friday’s terrorist attacks.

“With 500-1,000 euros you can get a military weapon in half an hour”, said Bilal Benyaich, a senior fellow at Brussels think-tank the Itinera Institute, who has studied the spread of radical Islam in Belgium. A vehicle rented in Brussels was found near one of the sites of the Paris attacks, which triggered the raids, Lacoere said. Brahim Abdeslam, 31, blew himself up Friday night inside a busy cafe. One brother has died in the attack, one was arrested in Belgium and Salah is the one who got away thus far. A third unnamed brother was apprehended in Belgium.

As French warplanes were pounding Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic State’s caliphate, the probe into Friday’s attacks on Paris unearthed new details about the gunmen and suicide bombers who took part in the carnage, which killed 129 and injured hundreds more. He then disappeared from the radar of the Belgian security services. Several AK47 rifles were found in the auto, French media quote judicial sources as saying.

The Empire State Building is dark in sympathy for the people of Paris after more than 120 people were killed in Friday’s series of shootings and explosions. Hotels turned off their lights as employees huddled behind chairs. One woman flung herself into the Canal St. Martin.

“Suddenly people were running and screaming everywhere, going in every direction”, said Omar Zahiri, a 50-year-old lawyer attending the vigil.

“We stand in solidarity with France in hunting down the perpetrators of this crime and bringing them to justice”, US President Barack Obama said after talks with his host, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The two others who detonated themselves at the stadium carried false Turkish passports, the French senator said. And it came less than two weeks after after a Russian plane crashed in Sinai – downed, intelligence officials believe, by a terrorist bomb – killing all 224 people aboard.

It appears that the Islamic extremist group ISIS is making good on its pledge to hide operatives among the tide of legitimate refugees now entering Europe.

The Home Secretary said: “Since the firearms attack that took place in 2008 in Mumbai, we have been building the capability of police here in the United Kingdom to respond to a multiple firearms attack and developing that capability – different training for the police and ensuring that they are able to respond quickly to such an event”. “I am one of many Americans with deep connections to France and immediate family living in and around Paris”, he said. Thousands of French troops deployed around Paris on Sunday and tourist sites stood shuttered in one of the most visited cities on Earth while investigators questioned the relatives of a suspected suicide bomber involved in the country’s deadliest violence since World War II.

French officials said eight men carried out the attacks.

Meanwhile things have seemingly started returning to normal in the city of love and side street cafés are bustling once again as Parisians gather across the city to mourn together. They called a news conference to deny any connection to extremism.