Update on the Paris attack

“We are not in a war of civilizations, because these assassins don’t represent one”.

What’s happened so far today?

President Hollande was told his country is under attack while watching France take on Germany in a friendly at the Stade de France.

Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian national now in Syria, remains investigators’ best lead as the person behind the Paris attacks.

“We are making use of the legal framework of the state of emergency to question people who are part of the radical jihadist movement… and all those who advocate hate of the republic”, Valls said on RTL radio.

French police have raided 168 locations across the country and arrested 23 people. Panic ensued Sunday night as police abruptly cleared hundreds of mourners from the famed Place de la Republique square, where police said firecrackers sparked a false alarm.

Last night it was announced France had conducted air strikes on the IS-controlled city of Raqqa in northern Syria, the French Defence Ministry confirmed. The operation was carried out in coordination with United States forces. A Belgian official said two of the seven people wired with suicide vests were French men living in Brussels, and among those arrested was another French citizen living in the Belgian capital.

He has been identified as the alleged driver of a rental vehicle that delivered attackers to a rock concert inside a nightclub in which 89 died.

In a sign that at least one gunman might have escaped, a source close to the investigation said a Seat vehicle believed to have been used by the attackers had been found in the eastern Paris suburb of Montreuil with three Kalashnikov rifles inside.

French police issued an alert and released a photo of Salah Abdeslam, 26.

Investigators have now named at least five suicide bombers.

Turkey notified France twice in December 2014 and June 2015 about one of the attackers in suicide bombings and shootings in Paris that killed more than 130 people, a senior Turkish government official said on Monday.

Three members of Amimour’s family were taken into custody early this morning, the statement said.

More than 120 people lost their lives and the French police and army were called in to help keep people safe.

“Ireland doesn’t have any special exemption as far as these matters are concerned”. However, we understand the threat to be very low. We are vigilant. We are engaging with our European partners in intelligence gathering.

Following Friday’s mayhem, Paris vowed to destroy the group.

On Tuesday, the number of military personnel deployed in France will also be stepped up to 10,000, against 7,000 before the attacks.

The official said another one of the assailants had a Syrian passport, a document that Greek officials have said he used to enter Europe in October on the Aegean island of Leros along with a record flood of refugees fleeing the war-torn Middle East. Sky News later quoted a Greek official as saying that the passport was fake, although the attacker probably did use it to pass through Leros.

The possibility that terrorists had hidden among the flow of migrants has intensified the debate in Europe about refugees.

French police have launched an worldwide manhunt for Abdeslam’s Brussels-born brother Salah, who is also said to be linked to the Paris attacks.