23 held in raids across France
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POLICE raided homes of suspected Islamist militants across France overnight arresting 23 people, and investigators identified a Belgian national living in Syria as the possible mastermind behind last Friday’s attacks in Paris.
Much of France came to a standstill at midday for a minute’s silence to remember the 129 killed in the coordinated suicide bombings and shootings. Metro trains stopped, pedestrians paused on pavements and office workers stood at their desks.
Prosecutors have identified five of the seven dead assailants — four Frenchmen and a foreigner fingerprinted in Greece last month. His role in the carnage has fueled speculation that Islamic State took advantage of a recent wave of refugees fleeing Syria to slip militants into Europe.
Police believe one attacker is on the run and are working on the assumption that at least four people helped organize the mayhem, the worst atrocity in France since World War II, which appears to have been organized in neighboring Belgium.
Belgian police arrested at least one person after a four-hour siege yesterday at a house in the Brussels district of Molenbeek, home to many Muslim immigrants, but failed to find a man believed to have played a key role in the Paris assault.
“We know that more attacks are being prepared, not just against France but also against other European countries,” French Prime Minister Manuel Valls told RTL radio. “We are going to live with this terrorist threat for a long time.”
Islamic State, which claimed responsibility for the attacks in retaliation for French airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, warned in a video released yesterday that any country hitting it would suffer the same fate, promising specifically to target Washington.
French warplanes bombed Islamic State training camps and a suspected arms depot in its Syrian stronghold Raqqa late on Sunday — its biggest such strike since it started assaults as part of a United States-led mission launched last year.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told reporters that police had arrested nearly two dozen people and seized arms, including a rocket launcher and automatic weapons, in 168 raids overnight. Another 104 people were put under house arrest, he said.
“Let this be clear to everyone, this is just the beginning, these actions are going to continue,” he said.
A source close to the investigation said that Belgian national Abdelhamid Abaaoud, currently in Syria, was suspected of having ordered the Paris operation. “He appears to be the brains behind several planned attacks in Europe,” the source said.
RTL Radio said Abaaoud is a 27-year-old from Molenbeek. He is also reported to have been linked to a series of planned attacks in Belgium that were foiled by police last January.
Police in Brussels have detained two suspects and are hunting Salah Abdeslam, a 26-year-old Frenchman based in the Belgian capital, who is one of three brothers believed to have been involved in the plot.
Schools and museums in Paris reopened yesterday after a 48-hour shutdown, but some popular tourist sites, including Disneyland and the Eiffel Tower, remained closed.
French tourism-related stocks fell sharply on fears visitors might shun Paris, one of the most visited cities in the world, but the country’s blue-chip CAC 40 index was steady.
Police have named two French attackers — Ismael Omar Mostefai, 29, from Chartres, southwest of Paris, and Samy Amimour, 28, from the Paris suburb of Drancy. A source close to the investigation named two other French assailants as Bilal Hadfi and Ibrahim Abdeslam.
France now believes Mostefai was in Syria from 2013-14 and his radicalization underlined the trouble France faces trying to capture an illusive enemy that grew up in its own cities.
“He was a normal man,” said Christophe, his neighbor in Chartres.
“Nothing made you think he would turn violent.”
Official figures estimate that 520 French nationals are in the Syrian and Iraqi war zones, including 116 women. A total of 137 have died in the fighting, 250 have returned home and about 700 have plans to travel to join jihadist factions.
The man stopped in Greece last month was carrying a Syrian passport in the name of Ahmad Al Mohammad. Police said they were still checking to see if the document was authentic, but said the dead man’s fingerprints matched those on record in Greece.
Greek officials said the passport holder had crossed from Turkey and then registered for asylum in Serbia before heading north, following a route taken by hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers this year.
The news revived a furious row within the European Union on how to handle the flood of Middle Eastern and African refugees. Senior Polish and Slovak officials dismissed an EU plan to relocate asylum seekers across the bloc, saying the violence underlined their concerns about taking in Muslims.
Britain said yesterday it will boost its intelligence agency staff by 15 percent and more than double spending on aviation security to defend against Islamist militants plotting attacks from Syria.
A source in Prime Minister David Cameron’s office said police had foiled one attack in Britain last month.
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