Paris shootout: Suspects holed up in apartment, reports say 2 killed, cops injured
PARIS: At least two people are reported by the French media to have died in northern Paris on Wednesday during a pre-dawn raid by police hunting for those behind the attacks that claimed 129 lives in the French capital five days ago.
Several policemen were wounded in the anti-terrorism raid, said a source close to the operation, which began before dawn in the suburb of Saint Denis. Police sources said several unidentified men were still holed up in an apartment as the operation continued at 6:15am.
The area is home to the Stade de France, one of several places hit by gunmen and suicide bombers on Friday in the worst ever attack on French soil, which was claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group.
Firemen told AFP they they joined the operation against “an armed group holed up in an apartment” at 4:31am, without giving any further details, adding that one person was lightly hurt. The area was closed down and intermittent gunfire could still be heard an hour after it started.
Another source said a special armed response unit took part in the raid, which comes as Europe was on high alert after footage from the scene of one of Friday’s attacks revealed a ninth suspect may have taken part.
It was not clear if this ninth man was one of two suspected accomplices detained in Belgium or was on the run, potentially with 26-year-old fugitive Frenchman Salah Abdeslam who carried out one of the attacks at Bonne Biere cafe along with his suicide-bomber brother Brahim.
French President Francois Hollande on Wednesday will hold a meeting to discuss proposals to extend by three months the state of emergency declared after the worst attacks in French history. It will then be put to vote by lawmakers Thursday and Friday.
In a sign of the nervousness gripping Europe after Friday’s carnage, a football match between Germany and the Netherlands was cancelled Tuesday and the crowd evacuated after police acted on a “serious” bomb threat.
As police stepped up the hunt for the fugitives, French and Russian jets pounded IS targets in the group’s Syrian stronghold of Raqa for a third consecutive day.
France and Russia have vowed merciless retaliation for the Paris attacks and last month’s bombing of a Russian airliner, also claimed by the Islamic State group, which have galvanised international resolve to destroy the jihadists and end Syria’s more than four-year civil war.
“It’s necessary to establish direct contact with the French and work with them as allies,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said as France prepared to send an aircraft carrier to the eastern Mediterranean.
Hollande will meet Putin in Moscow on November 26, two days after seeing US President Barack Obama in Washington.
Police have issued the photograph of one of the three men who blew themselves up outside the Stade de France, who investigators have established entered Europe through Greece, as hundreds of thousands of refugees have done this year.
He was found with a Syrian passport near his body, but investigators have not confirmed that he was the man in the document and are appealing for anyone who recognises him to come forward.
Satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which lost 12 staff in an attack by jihadist gunmen in January, unveiled a tribute cover for the Paris victims showing a dancing reveller with bottle and glass in hand, and champagne pouring out of bullet holes in his body.
“They have weapons,” the caption reads, adding: “Screw them, we have champagne.”
France has invoked a previously unused European Union article to ask member states for help in its mission to fight back against the Islamic State organisation, which received unanimous backing from Brussels.
But France also appears to be forging an unexpected alliance with Russia, which it has clashed with over the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria, after both countries were targeted by the jihadists in deadly attacks.
On Tuesday, Russia finally confirmed that the Russian passenger jet that crashed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula last month, killing 224 people, had been brought down by a bomb, though it did not name any responsible group.
The Kremlin said Putin and Hollande had “agreed to assure closer contact and coordination between the military and security service agencies of the two countries in actions against terrorist groups… in Syria”.
Read full article: TOI
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