A woman wearing an explosive suicide vest blew herself up Wednesday as heavily armed police tried to storm a suburban Paris apartment where the suspected mastermind of last week’s gun and bomb rampage was believed to be holed up, police said, reports The Detroit News.
They said one man was also killed and seven people arrested in the standoff, which began before dawn and continued for more than seven hours, with gunfire and large bangs sporadically ringing out near the apartment building In the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis.
Government spokesman Stéphane Le Foll said just before noon that “the operation is over.” The fate of the suspected attacks planner, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was unclear.
Police said a security perimeter around the building remained in place.
A senior police official said he believed Abaaoud, a Belgian Islamic State militant, was inside the apartment with five other heavily armed people when the raid started.
Abaaoud was believed to be in Syria after a January police raid in Belgium, but bragged in Islamic State propaganda of his ability to move back and forth between Europe and Syria undetected.
The official, who was not authorized to be publicly named according to police rules but is informed routinely about the operation, said scores of police stormed the building and were met with unexpectedly violent resistance.
Another police official not authorized to be publicly named because of police rules said four police officers were injured. No hostages were being held.
A senior police official and the Paris prosecutor’s office said SWAT teams arrested seven people in the building. They did not identify them.
French President François Hollande held an emergency meeting with senior ministers at the Elysee Palace to monitor the raid.
Residents said an explosion shook the neighborhood shortly after 4 a.m.
“We guessed it was linked to Friday night,” said Yves Steux, barman at L’Escargot restaurant 250 meters (yards) from the assault.”My wife panicked and was scared and told me not to leave, but I ignored her. Life goes on.”
Baptiste Marie, a 26-year-old independent journalist who lives in the neighborhood, said a second large explosion was followed by “two more explosions. There was an hour of gunfire.”
Another witness, Amine Guizani, said he heard the sound of grenades and automatic gunfire.
“It was continuous. It didn’t stop,” he said. “It lasted from 4:20 until 5:30. It was a good hour. I couldn’t say how many shots were fired, but it was probably 500. Hundreds, definitely. There were maybe 10 explosions.”
Sporadic bangs and explosions continued, and at 7:30 a.m. at least seven explosions shook the center of Saint-Denis. Associated Press reporters at the scene could hear what sounded like grenade blasts from the direction of the standoff.
Investigators have identified 27-year-old Abaaoud, a Belgian of Moroccan descent, as the chief architect of Friday’s attacks in Paris, which killed 129 people and injured 350 others.
A U.S. official briefed on intelligence matters said Abaaoud was a key figure in an Islamic State external operations cell that U.S. intelligence agencies have been tracking for many months.
Read more of this Associated Press report published by The Detroit News.