PARIS — A manhunt for a suspected terrorist involved in the Paris attacks spread across France and Belgium on Thursday, as the French authorities confirmed that an Islamic State militant suspected of orchestrating the attacks was killed in a police raid the day before.
PARIS — A manhunt for a suspected terrorist involved in the Paris attacks spread across France and Belgium on Thursday, as the French authorities confirmed that an Islamic State militant suspected of orchestrating the attacks was killed in a police raid the day before.
Police officers have broken down doors in towns and villages from Paris to Brussels in more than 600 raids and searches since Friday, arresting scores of suspected militants. Lawmakers in France moved Thursday to adopt new powers they said were intended to enhance the ability of law enforcement agencies to pursue suspected terrorists.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls of France said Thursday that the French authorities did not know for certain whether more suspects linked to the attacks that killed at least 129 people last week were still at large.
Valls added that investigators were still trying to establish what roles were played by the people arrested and killed in a raid in St.-Denis on Wednesday, including Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the Islamic State militant suspected of orchestrating the Paris attacks. But he added that “we can certainly imagine that this cell was about to stage new mass attacks in France.” He did not say what evidence was discovered in the raids to suggest new attacks were imminent.
The police killed Abaaoud, but another suspect, Salah Abdeslam, is still on the run. Valls said that the authorities did not know whether Abdeslam was in France, his country of citizenship, or in Belgium, where he lived.
The Paris prosecutor, François Molins, confirmed Abaaoud’s death on Thursday morning after fingerprint analysis, noting that his body was heavily riddled with wounds from gunfire and a grenade detonated during the raid.
At least one other person died in the raid: a woman who opened fire on police and then detonated a suicide vest, whom two French intelligence officials have identified as Hasna Aitboulahcen, 26, a cousin of Abaaoud.
Abaaoud’s death ended one chapter of the intense criminal investigation that began Friday night, after three teams of terrorists, in a series of closely coordinated attacks, killed 129 people.
The Belgian authorities on Thursday arrested nine people — seven of them as part of an investigation into Bilal Hadfi, 20, who detonated his explosive vest outside the Stade de France on Friday. Belgian police searched homes in the Brussels neighborhoods of Laeken, Uccle, Jette and Molenbeek. Molenbeek was the base of Abdeslam; his brother Ibrahim, who was one of the seven attackers who died; and Abaaoud.
French intelligence officials have concluded that Abaaoud was involved in at least four of six terrorist plots in France that have been foiled since the spring, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve announced at a news conference.
Abaaoud, a Belgian citizen who was 27 or 28, went to Syria last year to fight with the Islamic State, but it was not until Monday that French authorities learned — through a foreign intelligence service — that he had returned to Europe, via Greece, Cazeneuve said.
Cazeneuve said that investigators were looking into Abaaoud’s ties to three men: one who was arrested in France after returning from Turkey in June; a “jihadist” who was arrested in Istanbul in July before boarding a Prague-bound flight with a fake Swedish passport; and a would-be jihadi who was arrested in August and told French officials that he had been “trained and assigned by Abaaoud to perpetrate a violent act in France or in another European country.”