Paris Attacks: French Official Names Belgian as Mastermind

“Not because our military could not march into Mosul or Raqqa or Ramadi and temporarily clear out ISIL”, President Obama said.

While Syrian president Bashar al-Assad could not be part of the solution to the crisis, “our enemy is Daesh [Islamic State]”, Mr Hollande said, while insisting that France was fighting terrorism and not another civilisation.

“I will meet in the coming days with US President Obama and President Putin”, he said.

French officials received multiple warnings about Paris attacker Omer Ismail Mostefai before Friday’s terror attack but Turkey didn’t get a response from French authorities until after the attack, a Turkish official said on Monday.

President Francois Hollande led his stunned, jittery nation in one minute’s silence at the Sorbonne university, while thousands clasped hands outside a few of the bullet-riddled nightspots where extremists struck Friday night during a half-dozen attacks that also wounded 350. A few of the suspects have been linked to the bloody civil war raging in Syria that has enabled ISIS to thrive.

He warned that France needed “to prepare ourselves for further attacks”.

“We are not in a war of civilisations, because they [the terrorists] don’t have any”, Hollande said.

He was reportedly involved in previously thwarted train and church attacks. Belgium has issued an worldwide warrant for his arrest.

They were among seven people detained in Belgium at the weekend. A Brussels parking ticket found inside led police to at least one of the arrests in Belgium, a French police official said.

At least one of the dead attackers and five of the people arrested in raids on Saturday had connections with the district and the mayor of the Belgian capital has said the area “must stop being a base for those who make war in Europe”.

“It’s more or less an indicator, like a thermometer that one has to monitor and feed all the time for it to be efficient”, a police officer said. Now, his whereabouts are unknown.

– A black Seat and a black Volkswagen Polo, which is registered in Belgium, appear to be two cars used in the Paris attacks. Police surrounded a building and called into a megaphone for someone to come out.

Speaking for the main centre-right opposition, Republicans floor leader Christian Jacob said he could see no justification for amending the constitution, which he said was unnecessary. Another brother, identified as Ibrahim Abdeslam, was killed during Friday’s attack.

French authorities released more information on two of the other terrorists on Monday. Abaaoud is now in Syria, according to Reuters.

The raid was aimed at arresting Salah Abdeslam, prosecutors said earlier.

“It can happen in America just like in France”, he said.

Overnight Sunday, France launched air strikes on IS targets in Syria. Hollande argued French citizens with dual nationality who were convicted of terrorism offenses should be stripped of their citizenship, while saying authorities should be able to block dual-nationals returning to France if they posed a terrorist threat.

Late on Sunday, French planes bombed the stronghold of the Islamic State jihadists.

However, Iraqi intelligence officials told the AP that they provided specifics to France, including that attackers had been trained specifically for Friday’s attack and deployed from Raqqa. The official did not specify who those three attackers were. A fake Syrian passport was found on the body of one of the suicide bombers at the Stade de France.

“French killed French”, he told parliamentarians.

“It was normal to take the initiative and action and France had the legitimacy to do so”.

The document has yet to be verified and Serbia detained a migrant on Monday whose passport contained the same data.

– Six of the Paris attackers spent time in Syria, according to CNN affiliate BFM in France. “They did not even go to the mosque”, she said.

“The United States and Europe must work together to find reasonable ways to manage the current refugee flow into Europe and to utilize more creative and effective intelligence to monitor terrorist plans”, Jacobsen wrote in an opinion article for CNN.

A new police operation was underway in Molenbeek this morning, Belgian media reported. Cazenueve has ordered 104 people to be put under house arrest since the Paris attacks.

He added that he will ask Parliament to extend the country’s state of emergency for three months.