Police forces operate in Saint-Denis, a northern suburb of Paris, Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2015. AP
PARIS—A woman wearing an explosive suicide vest blew herself up and a suspected jihadist was killed on Wednesday during a huge police assault in Paris targeting the suspected mastermind of last week’s attacks in the French capital.
Gunfire and explosions rocked the Saint-Denis area in the north of the capital near the Stade de France stadium from before dawn as terrified residents were evacuated or told to stay in their homes.
Authorities arrested seven people, while five police officers suffered minor injuries in the operation that turned into a seven-hour standoff between security forces and a group of people holed up in an apartment.
Gunfire first rang out in the darkness around 4 a.m. in the streets close to where three suicide bombers had detonated their explosives outside the stadium at the start of Friday’s attacks.
Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said telephone surveillance and witness reports “led us to believe” that Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected mastermind of Friday’s series of attacks in Paris that killed 129 people, had been in the apartment.
But Molins added that it was too early to say if he was among those arrested or killed.
Abaaoud is an Islamic State (IS) group fighter who was previously thought to be in Syria after fleeing raids in his native Belgium earlier this year.
Exchange of fire
Residents of the Paris suburb, some of whom were evacuated in their underwear, said they had been caught in a terrifying exchange of fire.
Hayat, 26, had been leaving a friend’s apartment where she had spent the night when the shots erupted.
“I heard gunfire,” she said. “I could have been hit by a bullet. I never thought terrorists could have hid here.”
Another witness, Amine Guizani, said he heard the sound of grenades and automatic gunfire.
“They were shooting for an hour. Nonstop. There were grenades. It was going, stopping. Kalashnikovs. Starting again,” Guizani said.
Sporadic bangs and explosions continued, and at 7:30 a.m. at least seven explosions shook the center of Saint-Denis.
Ninth suspect
The raid came after footage from the scene of one of the Paris attacks revealed a ninth suspect may have taken part.
It is known that seven were killed in the carnage on Friday, most after detonating suicide belts.
It was not clear if the ninth man was one of two suspected accomplices detained in Belgium or was still on the run, potentially with 26-year-old fugitive Frenchman Salah Abdeslam who took part in the attacks with his suicide-bomber brother Brahim.
Police also carried out multiple raids in southwest France. The operations were part of an antiterrorism strategy but not directly linked to the Paris attacks, an investigator said.
Extending the emergency
French President Francois Hollande was to hold discussions on Wednesday on extending to three months the state of emergency declared after the worst attacks in French history. Lawmakers will vote on the proposal on Thursday and Friday.
As police stepped up the hunt for the fugitives, French and Russian jets pounded IS targets in the group’s Syrian stronghold of Raqqa for a third consecutive day.
A monitoring group said the French and Russian air strikes had killed at least 33 IS jihadists in the last 72 hours.
France and Russia have vowed merciless retaliation for the Paris attacks and last month’s bombing of a Russian airliner over the Egyptian Sinai peninsula that killed 229 people and was also claimed by IS.
The French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle steamed from the southern port of Toulon on Wednesday, heading for the eastern Mediterranean to participate in intensified air strikes against IS targets.
Restoring ties
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday said “it’s necessary to establish direct contact with the French and work with them as allies.”
The attacks have galvanized international resolve to destroy the jihadist group and end Syria’s more than four-year civil war, while potentially restoring ties between Russia and France that had collapsed since last year’s Ukraine crisis.
Hollande will meet Putin in Moscow on Nov. 26, two days after seeing US President Barack Obama in Washington.
In a sign of the nervousness gripping Europe after Friday’s carnage in Paris, a football match between Germany and the Netherlands in Hanover was canceled on Tuesday and the crowd evacuated after police acted on a “serious” bomb threat.
Condemning terrorism
The body representing Muslims in France said it would ask all 2,500 mosques in the country to condemn “all forms of violence or terrorism” in prayers this Friday.
The message will condemn such acts “unambiguously,” said the French Muslim Council (CFCM).
France has invoked a previously unused European Union article to ask member states for help in its mission to fight back against IS, which received unanimous backing from Brussels.
The alliance comes as international players meet to discuss ways of ending the Syrian war, which has spurred the rise of IS, forced millions into exile and triggered Europe’s worst migrant crisis since World War II.
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, Russia and Saudi Arabia reached agreement at the weekend on a path toward elections.
Highlighting US fears over the attack, two Air France flights bound for Paris from the United States were diverted on Tuesday and landed safely after anonymous threats that the carrier described as a “bomb scare.” Reports from AFP and AP