Also read
* Two dead, five arrested in raid targeting suspected mastermind of Paris attacks * French hunt 2nd fugitive, launch new airstrikes on IS * French president’s security stance draws Bush comparison * Paris attacks leave teachers, parents around the world contemplating about how to tell children * Paris attacks lead Americans to wonder about U.S. safety * Stories of those who died in the Paris attacks
SAINT-DENIS, France (AP) – The presumed mastermind of last week’s devastating attacks in Paris – targeted in a police operation in the suburb of Saint-Denis on Wednesday – once bragged about being so slippery he could move undetected between Syria and Belgium, his home country.
Explosions and gunfire rang out as police stormed a building in a Paris suburb where Abdelhamid Abaaoud was believed to be hiding with five other heavily armed people, a senior police official told AP. Authorities said a woman blew herself up and a man was killed. Five people were arrested.
The official was not authorized to be publicly named according to police rules, but is informed routinely about the operation.
On Monday, French authorities identified Abaaoud, the child of Moroccan immigrants who grew up in the Belgian capital’s multiethnic Molenbeek-Saint-Jean neighborhood, as the presumed mastermind of last Friday’s attacks that killed 129 people and injured hundreds. He also is believed to have links to earlier attacks that were thwarted: one against a Paris-bound high-speed train that was foiled by three young Americans in August, and the other against a church in the French capital’s suburbs.