7 terror suspects held in Belgium
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SEVEN people were detained in Belgium yesterday in connection with the deadly attacks in Paris as the city entered three days of mourning for the 129 people killed in the worst violence in France in decades.
Thousands of French troops were deployed and tourist sites stood shuttered in one of the most visited cities on Earth, while more details started to emerge about the investigation.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for Friday's gun and bomb attacks on a stadium, a concert hall and cafes that also wounded 350 people, 99 of them seriously.
Authorities said three teams of attackers were involved and seven suicide bombers blew themselves up —three near the stadium and three at the concert hall and one not far from it.
Authorities have not said if there are more attackers at large.
A French police official said yesterday that three Kalashnikovs were found inside a Seat car found in Montreuil, a suburb 6 kilometers east of the French capital. It was one of two vehicles known to have been used in the attacks.
The official, who could not be named because the investigation is ongoing, said the weapons have not yet been analyzed.
In Belgium, an official said three other people were arrested there on Saturday.
The official also said that two of the seven attackers who died in Paris on Friday night were Frenchmen living in Brussels.
One was living in the Molenbeek neighborhood, which is considered a focal point for religious extremism and fighters going to Syria, he said.
Security was heightened across France, across Europe, even across the ocean to New York, and how to respond to the Paris attacks became a key point among US Democratic presidential hopefuls at a debate held on Saturday night.
At the request of France, the European Union will hold a special meeting of its interior and justice ministers on Friday to assess the impact of the Paris attacks.
In Paris, the shining sun and warm air felt cruelly incongruous. Streets, parks and commerce were unusually empty for such a mild, clear day, and several city monuments were closed for security reasons or to express the city's grief.
Some Parisians and tourists defied the high security, walking past armed soldiers to take pictures by the Eiffel Tower.
In its statement claiming responsibility, the Islamic State group called Paris "the capital of prostitution and obscenity."
President Francois Hollande has said that France, which is already bombing Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq in a United States-led coalition, would increase its military efforts to crush IS and be "merciless" against the extremists.
The investigation sprawled well beyond France's borders, since Paris Prosecutor Francois Molins said some attackers mentioned Syria and Iraq.
French authorities are particularly concerned about the threat from hundreds of French Islamic radicals who have traveled to Syria and returned home, possibly with dangerous skills.
Details about one attacker began to emerge: 29-year-old Frenchman Ismael Mostefai, who had a record of petty crime and had been flagged in 2010 for ties to Islamic radicalism.
He was identified from fingerprints found on a finger amid the bloody carnage from a Paris concert hall, the Paris prosecutor said.
Police detained his father, a brother and other relatives on Saturday night, and they were still being questioned yesterday, a judicial official said.
Quentin Bongard said he left one of the targeted cafes after a fight with his girlfriend just moments before the attacks.
"Those are all places that I go often to,"the Paris resident said, still shaken.
"We just want to come here, bring flowers, because we don't want to be terrorized ... but it is frightening," he said.
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