Intel sources claim Paris terror mastermind killed in police raid

Intelligence officials say the presumed mastermind of last week’s devastating attacks in Paris was killed during a shootout with police in a suburb north of the French capital on Wednesday, the Washington Post reported Wednesday.

There was no official confirmation on the fate of 27-year-old Abdelhamid Abaaoud from French authorities, but Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said that two people were killed in the seven-hour siege, including a woman who blew herself up, and seven others were arrested.

Molins said the identity of the two people killed has yet to be determined, and that Abaaoud was not among those arrested.

But two senior European intelligence officials said the Belgian jihadi was killed in the raid. Similar information was reported by French media, without citing a source.

Molins said the raid was launched after information from tapped telephone conversations, surveillance and witness accounts indicated that Abaaoud might be in a safe house in the north Paris suburb of Saint-Denis.

A US official briefed on intelligence matters said Abaaoud was a key figure in an Islamic State external operations cell that US intelligence agencies have been tracking for months.

Abaaoud was believed to have escaped to 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.

According to Molins, the operation began with a pre-dawn shootout and resulted in the capture of three people inside the apartment. Two others were detained while trying to hide in the rubble. The man who lived in the apartment and one of his acquaintances also were arrested.

Molins said police fired some 5,000 rounds during an hour-long exchange of fire at a hideout where a terrorist cell had holed up north of the capital.

He said heavily armed police squads initially were thwarted by a reinforced door to the apartment, and faced nearly incessant fire as they worked to enter.

Four police officers were slightly injured and a SWAT team police dog was killed in the operation. The National Police said in a tweet that the 7-year-old Belgian Malinois named Diesel was “killed by terrorists.”

Molins said the identities of those killed and arrested were still being verified, and “based on the work of forensic police, we’ll tell you who was in the apartment — and what consequences it will have for the development of the investigation.”

French authorities had previously said that at least eight people were directly involved in the bloodshed: seven who died in the attacks and one, Salah Abdeslam, who got away and slipped across the border to Belgium. A Spanish security official said Wednesday that French authorities have sent out a bulletin to police across Europe asking them to watch out for a Citroen Xsara car that could be carrying Abdeslam.

On Monday, French authorities identified Abaaoud, the child of Moroccan immigrants who grew up in the Belgian capital’s multiethnic Molenbeek neighborhood, as the presumed mastermind of last Friday’s attacks that killed 129 people and wounded over 350. He also is believed to have links to earlier attacks that were thwarted: one against a Paris-bound high-speed train that was foiled by three young Americans in August, and the other against a church in the French capital’s suburbs.

The site of Wednesday’s raid is just over a mile (less than two kilometers) from the Stade de France soccer stadium; three suicide bombers blew themselves up outside the stadium during an international soccer match Friday.

They were one of three teams of attackers who also targeted a rock concert at the Bataclan theater as well popular night spots in a trendy Paris neighborhood. The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the carnage, which has left France in mourning and on edge.

The Paris attacks have galvanized international determination to confront Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, bringing France, Russia and the United States closer to an alliance.