Paris attacks: European Union ministers agree to step up security

France’s Prime Minister Manuel Valls announced on Friday (local time) that the death toll from the attacks a week ago by suicide bombers and gunmen has risen to 130 people.

In a statement tonight, the prosecutor’s office said “the person that was arrested yesterday has been charged by the investigating judge with participation in terrorist attacks and participation in the activities of a terrorist organisation, and placed into custody”. That man carried a Syrian passport naming him as Ahmad Al-Mohammad, though it’s unclear whether it was authentic.

Brussels residents are waking up to largely empty streets as the city enters its second day under the highest threat level and the manhunt continues for a suspect missing since the November 13 attacks in France.

One of the suspected attackers, Salah Abdeslam, 26, is still on the run.

They are also working to identify a third person killed in a seven-hour police raid on Wednesday alongside wanted Belgian Islamist Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who coordinated the carnage, and his 26-year-old female cousin.

French investigators are working to identify a third person, believed to be a male, who blew themselves up during the raid.

Interior ministers in the European Union are discussing tightening security measures at the external borders of the Schengen area amid concerns jihadists are exploiting the refugee crisis to “slip in” to Europe.

“We must be implacable in our determination, we must speed up our action, otherwise Europe will lose its way”, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said. All are released except Jawad Bendaoud, who tells French TV he had been asked to put two people up in his apartment for three days, but had no idea they had anything to do with terrorism.

Cazeneuve said the 28-nation bloc must move forward on a long-delayed system for collecting and exchanging airline passenger information, data he said is vital “for tracing the return of foreign fighters” from Syria and Iraq.

According to the police source, its was these Moroccan officials who told the French authorities Abaaoud was in France.

The attacks centered on places of leisure and culture -including cafés, a sports stadium and the Bataclan music hall.

Aitboulahcen was seen escorting Abaaoud into the building, where the two would later die during the police raid on Wednesday morning.

Officials thought Abaaoud had escaped to Syria, and it was not clear how he ended up near Paris.

Abaaoud was filmed at 10.14pm at the Croix de Chavaux in Montreuil, not far from where one of the cars used in the attacks was found.

Ait Boulahcen was known to have ties to Abdelhamid Abaaoud, 27, suspected of orchestrating the Paris attacks. A few of the homes searched were in the neighborhood of Molenbeck where Abdelslam lived, as well as his brother Ibrahim, who blew himself up outside one of the cafes targeted in the attacks.