Security forces sealed off streets in a Paris suburb Monday, and a bomb squad headed to the scene after investigators found a possible suicide vest in a garbage can, reports CNN.
Paris police told CNN that authorities were trying to determine whether the article found in the Paris suburb of Montrouge contained explosives. CNN affiliate BFMTV reported that the item, which resembled a suicide vest, contained bolts and TATP, the same explosive found in the suicide belts used by Paris attackers.
Could there be a connection between the garbage-can find and the November 13 series of shootings and bombings that killed 130 people in Paris?
Authorities haven't said. But BFMTV and the French newspaper Le Monde reported Monday night that suspect Salah Abdeslam's cell phone was tracked to the area soon after the attacks.
"The big question is going to be: Is this the suicide vest that Salah Abdeslam was tasked to use?" CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank said.
And there are other questions, too, Cruickshank said. If it was a vest belonging to Abdeslam, why would it just have been discovered 10 days after the attacks? And if it wasn't, then whose is it?
"It is possible that somebody else may have jettisoned it, an attacker that we don't know much about at this point," Cruickshank said. "So they'll be doing all sorts of forensics, trying to establish who this belonged to, and that will be a huge priority for French investigators."