French forensic teams are investigating whether the body of a man found dead after a massive firefight with police in a St-Denis apartment is that of the alleged mastermind of last week’s Paris terror attacks, Abdel-Hamid Abu Oud*, reports The Guardian.
At least two people died in the assault targeting Abu Oud but neither the 27-year-old Belgian extremist nor another fugitive sought in connection with Friday’s shootings and suicide bombings, Salah Abdeslam, were among the eight people arrested.
One of the dead was a woman, believed to be Abu Oud’s cousin, Hasna Aitboulahcen, who blew herself up with an explosive vest, and the second an as yet unidentified man possibly killed by police sniper fire or a grenade whose body was recovered in rubble from the flat in a rundown house in the rue du Corbillon.
Media reports quoting sources have suggested Abu Oud was killed in the assault but French officials have so far said in public statements that they do not know. Identification was proving difficult because the bodies had to be pieced together, Paris prosecutor François Molins said, and may take “longer than expected”.
The French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, told French radio on Thursday that if Abu Oud had managed to return to France from Syria, where he was initially believed to have plotted the attacks from, it showed that there were faults in the entire European system of checks.
Molins said those arrested and killed in the St-Denis raid were likely to have been plotting further attacks.
“A fourth cell of terrorists has been neutralised,” Molins said, in reference to the three “cells” of jihadis who attacked Paris in co-ordinated strikes on Friday night, targeting a football match at the Stade de France, a concert hall, and a swath of cafes and bars in the 10th and 11th arrondissements.
“Everything leads us to believe that given their weaponry and level of preparation that they [the fourth cell] were ready to act.”
Read more of this report from The Guardian.
* Mediapart house style is to write his name in this way: Abdelhamid Abaaoud