THEY GOT HIM: French confirm ringleader of Paris massacre is dead

Mr Valls admitted authorities “do not know” how Abaaoud entered France before the attacks on the nation’s capital, which left 129 people dead.

Also on Thursday, the Belgian police conducted their own sweep in Brussels on Thursday. “(We have) reestablished control of the internal borders like the Schengen with 132 passages that are controlled at all times, 61 by the police at the borders, 71 by customs officials”, Valls said.

The apartment block in the northern Paris district of Saint-Denis, near the Stade de France national stadium, was severely damaged as elite RAID police rained 5,000 rounds of ammunition on it and lobbed in grenades after a tipoff that Abaaoud was there. He and six other assailants died in the series of attacks on multiple targets, which also included the Bataclan concert hall and several restaurants and bars.

His cousin Hasna Ait Boulahcen, 26, who blew her head through a window into the street when she detonated a suicide vest during the siege, was a boozing party girl dubbed “The Cowgirl” because of her fondness for Wild West cowboy hats.

French police launched the raid early Wednesday after receiving information from tapped phone calls, surveillance and witness accounts that suggested Abaaoud was in the apartment in Saint-Denis.

According to the official, one of the officers asked: “Where is your boyfriend?” and she responded angrily: “He’s not my boyfriend!”. As gunshots rang out, an officer was heard shouting: “Where is your boyfriend?” Three police officials said Aitboulahcen often described herself as his “cousin”, but the term also is used by young French of North African descent to refer to close friends who are no blood relation. Three people are killed and eight arrested.

The seven others, including one whose detention was linked to Paris, were let go, a statement from the proscecutor’s office said.

“The government measures will be much more important than Abaaoud’s death in deterring people following in his footsteps”, said Benyaich, from Brussels think-tank the Itinera Institute. “The investigation will establish precisely how this Belgo-Moroccan was involved”.

Previously they had said only one attacker had been registered in Greece, an entry point for numerous hundreds of thousands of migrants seeking asylum in Europe.

“Terrorists are crossing the borders of the European Union”, said Cazeneuve, underlining why 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.

The Spanish interior minister told a local TV station that the country was pretty sure fugitive Salah Abdeslam hadn’t fled to Spain in the aftermath of the Paris attacks. Could it be that of the suspected missing gunman Abdeslam?

French police official Jean-Marc Falcone, speaking on France-Info radio, said he was unable to say if Abdeslam, whose brother, Brahim, blew himself up in the attacks, could be back on French territory.

A jihadist arrested in August told investigators he was trained by Abaaoud, who gave him a “mission” to carry out a violent attack in France or another European country, the interior minister said.

July 2015 – He is sentenced in absentia by a Belgian court to 20 years’ imprisonment for kidnapping his brother and serving as an IS recruiter.

Abaaoud, in his late 20s, had been on the counterterrorism radar for a few time and was targeted in French airstrikes on Syria last month, a French counterterrorism source told CNN.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls told the French Senate that the death toll from last week’s massacre in Paris had risen by one, to 130 people.

He spoke as lawmakers voted to extend a state of emergency for three months.

In addition, 164 people have been placed under house arrest with new powers permitted under France’s state of emergency. “We don’t know how but the result was that the two jihadists blew up”, he said. “It is urgent that Europe wakes up, organises itself and defends itself against the terrorist threat”.

Next week Hollande is going to Washington and Moscow to push for a stronger global coalition against IS.

Meanwhile, Italian authorities were searching for five people flagged by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in connection with a U.S. State Department warning Wednesday that St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, Milan’s cathedral and La Scala opera house, as well as churches, synagogues, restaurants, theaters and hotels had been identified as “potential targets”.