Three terrorist suspects killed in French raid in Saint-Denis

Two suspected jihadists were killed, including a woman who blew herself up, in a shootout Wednesday in north Paris with police hunting the mastermind of last week’s attacks on the French capital, sources said.

Two officials said the police operation was connected to the investigation into Friday’s gun and bomb attacks that killed 129 people.

Two terrorist suspects have been declared dead, one of them a woman who blew herself up with a suicide belt, according to authorities.

According to Reuters, five other people have been arrested during the dawn raids which saw loud explosions and heavy gunfire echoing through the streets of Saint-Denis. Police in full assault gear cordoned off the area nearby the apartment and cut off public transport, the Associated Press reports. French and Belgian authorities have issued a warrant for another person, Belgian-born Salah Abdeslam, whose brother was among the attackers.

A team of gunmen also opened fire at a series of nightspots in one of Paris’ trendiest neighborhoods, officials said.

“The police arrived and they said, “Get out quick!”

A few reports say that a third death was not a target of the raid but a bystander. “These are not regular people”, he said. They let him go because he apparently hadn’t yet been linked to the terrorist operation.

On a solidarity visit to Paris, US Secretary of State John Kerry said a “big transition” in Syria was probably only weeks away after Iran, Russian Federation and Saudi Arabia reached agreement at the weekend on a path towards elections. “But we had no knowledge of the fact that he was back in Europe”.

French President Francois Hollande leaves the Elysee Palace after…

Security forces conducted more than 128 new raids around the country overnight, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Tuesday during a radio interview.

French authorities have said the plot was masterminded from Syria. Russian Federation and France, long at loggerheads over their approach to the war in Syria, took steps toward a united military front against Islamic State in response to the massacre in Paris and a downed plane in Egypt. “It’s not over”, local member of parliament Mathieu Hanotin said on France Inter radio.

Abaaoud, from Belgium, has been named by French officials as the man behind Friday’s attacks and was initially believed to be in Syria.

Abaaoud had been implicated in the planning of a number of terrorist attacks and conspiracies in Western Europe before the Paris attacks.

He is a Belgian national in his late 20s who is believed to be close to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. His whereabouts since that interview in February had remained unknown.