Paris attacks: Third body found in flat raided by police; as death toll hits 130
A third body has been recovered from the apartment in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis raided by police after last Friday’s attacks, prosecutors say.
They also confirmed that one of the dead was Hasna Aitboulahcen, 26, who reportedly blew herself up in the raid.
The alleged ringleader of the attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, is also confirmed to have died in Wednesday’s raid. The third body is still being identified.
European Union (EU) ministers have decided to tighten checks on all people entering Europe.
At present only non-EU nationals and migrants are systematically checked by police at the EU’s external borders. But now the EU will extend those database checks to EU citizens too.
Travellers’ details will be checked against data in the Schengen Information System (SIS), which lists wanted terror suspects and people linked to organised crime.
Most EU countries are in the Schengen zone – a passport-free travel area. After the Paris attacks it emerged that terror suspects had not been detected at the EU’s external borders.
The European Commission has called for the establishment of a Europe-wide intelligence agency.
France’s Prime Minister Manuel Valls announced, Friday that the death toll from the attacks a week ago by suicide bombers and gunmen has risen to 130 people.
Hundreds of people were wounded in the near-simultaneous attacks on Paris bars and restaurants, a concert hall and sports stadium.
Islamic State (IS) said it was behind the attacks – the worst in Europe since the 2004 Madrid bombings.
Demonstrations have been banned under France’s state of emergency, but dozens of French artists and cultural figures have urged people to make a lot of “noise and light”, by turning on music and lights, at 20:20 GMT, Friday, to mark the exact time a week ago that the attacks began.
Tributes are paid to the victims of the Paris attacks
Prosecutors have now confirmed the identities of two of the three suspects who died in the seven-hour-long raid in the Rue Cormillon apartment on Wednesday morning.
The prosecutor’s office said Hasna Aitboulahcen’s passport was found near her body.
News that Abaaoud – a well-known face of IS and on international “most wanted” lists – and at least one of his accomplices may have travelled undetected from Syria before carrying out the attacks has raised fears about EU border security.
Thursday, authorities said they had identified the corpse of Belgian national Abdelhamid Abaaoud from fingerprints in the aftermath of Wednesday’s raid, in which at least two people died including a female suicide bomber after a gun battle with police.
“It was his body we discovered in the building, riddled with impacts,” a statement from the Paris prosecutor said, a day after the pre-dawn raid. The prosecutor later added that it was unclear whether Abaaoud had detonated a suicide belt.
Abaaoud was accused of orchestrating last Friday’s coordinated bombings and shootings in the French capital, which killed 129 people. Seven assailants died in the attack and a suspected eighth is still on the run.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls broke the news of Abaaoud’s death in parliament, Thursday to applause from lawmakers who were voting to extend a state of emergency for another three months.
“We know today … that the mastermind of the attacks – or one of them, let’s remain cautious – was among those dead,” Valls told reporters.
Even before last week’s attacks, Morroccan-born Abaaoud, 28, was one of Islamic State’s highest-profile European recruits, prominently profiled in the group’s slick online English-language magazine Dabiq, where he boasted of travelling across European borders staging attacks.
Reuters
