PARIS — The French government launched what it said was a “massive” air assault against Islamic State’s self-declared capital in Syria on Sunday in response to deadly attacks in Paris that officials say were orchestrated by the extremist group. ADVERTISING
PARIS — The French government launched what it said was a “massive” air assault against Islamic State’s self-declared capital in Syria on Sunday in response to deadly attacks in Paris that officials say were orchestrated by the extremist group.
The airstrikes destroyed two camps operated by the militants in Raqqah, one of them used as a command post, recruitment center and arms depot and the other as a training site, the Ministry of Defense said in a statement.
A dozen aircraft took part in the attack, including 10 fighter jets, and 20 bombs were dropped, the ministry said.
The new airstrikes came as European security agencies launched an international manhunt for at least one other suspect in the wave of terrorist attacks that struck six locations in Paris on Friday, leaving 129 people dead and more than 345 injured.
The French air force had pledged to step up its aerial bombardment of militant targets in response to Friday’s assault, which French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said was directed by a group in Syria using networks based primarily in Belgium.
“A group situated in Syria … is organizing attacks (with) actors situated in Belgium who are not known to our services, and is inciting them to act on French territory, just like they incite them to act in other European cities,” he said in an interview Sunday with France 2 TV.
“As a result, we are facing a new reality, one of acts of war organized by barbarians from inside Syria,” he said.
A U.S. law enforcement official said Sunday that Iraqi intelligence officials shortly before the attacks in France had warned of a possible attack somewhere outside the Middle East.
The alert, delivered to several foreign countries serving under the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, warned that Islamic State leaders were plotting another strike after being “encouraged” by their success in the recent bombing of a commercial airliner flying out of Egypt.
But the alert sent by senior Iraqi intelligence officials was deemed to be routine, one of many from the country since Islamic State began its operations several years ago in Iraq and Syria.
“It was non-specific,” the source said, speaking anonymously because the Paris investigation is still just getting underway. “It did not say Paris was next.”
In the continuing hunt for suspects and possible accomplices, the French National Police issued a wanted notice for Salah Abdeslam, a 26-year-old man born in the Belgian capital, Brussels. He is believed to be the brother of one of the seven dead attackers and another man detained in a sweep in Belgium, according to French news reports.
Police described Abdeslam as dangerous. “Above all, do not intervene yourself,” they cautioned the public in a tweet.
As authorities hunted for the suspect, new details emerged about some of the assailants who died in the attacks, six of them by blowing themselves up with suicide vests and the other shot by police.
At least three of them were believed to be French citizens, including two who had been living in the Brussels area, according to Belgian authorities. The third was identified by French officials as 29-year-old Ismael Omar Mostefai, who had been living recently in Chartres, a city about 60 miles southwest of Paris.
Information from the Balkans suggested that another attacker might have entered Europe as a Syrian asylum seeker.
The militant group Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the assault, which involved six coordinated shootings and explosions at a rock concert venue, several eateries and a soccer stadium at which a match between France and Germany was underway.
In Belgium, federal prosecutors announced that two of the dead militants were French nationals who had been living in Brussels and in Molenbeek Saint Jean, a suburb known as a hotbed of Islamic radicalism. A gun-toting man who was overpowered aboard a Paris-bound train in April is believed to have lived there.
The mayor of Molenbeek Saint Jean told reporters Sunday that five people have been arrested there in connection with Friday night’s massacre.
Three others were arrested early Saturday in the Brussels area. One of them was reportedly a Frenchman who had rented a black Volkswagen Polo, bearing Belgian license plates, that was found near the Bataclan concert hall. The car contained parking tickets that allowed authorities to link it to Molenbeek Saint Jean.
Another car, which reportedly contained three automatic rifles, was found in a suburb of Paris, just a few miles from where most of the shootings took place.
The discovery of the black SEAT Leon automobile raised the possibility that there were more attackers than the seven who authorities said died in the attacks.
Asked about that possibility Sunday, Cazeneuve said the ongoing investigations would reveal how many were involved.
The U.S. law enforcement source said French and Belgium authorities are now trying to pin down the financing for the Paris attacks, including the costs for AK-47s, bomb parts and vehicles.
They also believe that some of the Brussels-based terrorists were in communication with Islamic State counterparts in Syria and possibly France as well, the source said, “for support and direction.”
Asked if they had also been in touch with Islamic State recruits in the U.S., the source was unsure. But, he added: “There are ongoing FBI investigations in every field office in the country.”
The mayor of Chartres, Jean-Pierre Gorges, named Mostefai as another suspected attacker. Mostefai was reportedly on the authorities’ watch list as someone susceptible to radicalization but not yet requiring extensive surveillance.
“How many deaths must there be before our leaders understand and act accordingly?” Gorges wrote in a Facebook post.
Mostefai is suspected of being one of three attackers who went on a shooting rampage in the Bataclan concert hall, in which at least 89 people were killed.
Two of the gunmen blew themselves up with suicide vests; the third was shot by police, French officials said. Authorities identified Mostefai from a fingerprint taken from his severed finger, which was found in the theater.
He was known to police as a small-time criminal whose offenses included driving without a license and insulting behavior toward authority. The daily newspaper Le Monde said Mostefai probably spent the winter of 2013-14 in Syria.
Six of Mostefai’s relatives were detained by police for questioning, Le Monde said. One was his brother, who turned himself in for questioning and who told Agence France-Presse that he and Mostefai were estranged.
French prosecutors said they have determined the identities of two more of Friday’s suicide bombers. They did not give names, but said they were both French nationals living in Belgium.
There were also reports that a Syrian passport found near the body of one of the attackers belonged to a man who had entered Europe via Greece last month and then followed the well-worn trail to Northern Europe that hundreds of thousands of migrants have trekked along this year.
Greek officials have confirmed that the passport-holder was registered on the island of Leros, and officials in Serbia and Croatia have also said that the holder of the passport came through their countries.
Whether the passport is authentic or one of the many fake Syrian passports in circulation is unclear.
Authorities have banned public gatherings in the wake of the attacks. But residents started streaming into Place de la Republique, near where the shootings occurred square Sunday afternoon as a gesture of defiance against the fear the attackers had sought to inspire.
