Islamic State pays tribute to Paris attackers, identifies 2 as 'Iraqis'

Belgian federal prosecutor says investigators ‘didn’t know at all’ the two men cited in an homage by IS magazine Dabiq

PARIS — The Islamic State group has published an online photo tribute to the Muslim extremists who killed 130 people in Paris in November, including pictures of two unknown men it identifies as Iraqis.

Belgian federal prosecutor Thierry Werts said Wednesday that investigators “didn’t know them at all,” referring to two men identified by their noms de guerre as Ali Al-Iraqi and Ukashah Al-Iraqi. Al-Iraqi in Arabic means “the Iraqi.”

The photo display in Dabiq, the IS propaganda magazine, also shows suspected Paris attack ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud and eight other men in battle dress.

Fugitive suspect Salah Abdeslam is not among them — an omission Belgian jihadi watcher Pieter van Ostaeyen said may be due to IS’s desire to honor only those extremists slain in the Nov. 13 bloodbath and its aftermath.

Last week, a French prosecutor said authorities identified a suicide bomber who blew himself up during the police raid following the jihadist attacks in Paris.

Chakib Akrouh, 25, identified from DNA matched to his mother, was a Belgian-Moroccan man also suspected of being one of the gunmen in the November rampage.

The tribute to the terrorists who carried out the terror attack in Paris on November 13, as published in Dabiq, an Islamic State publication. (Screen capture Dabiq)

“The suicide bomber who blew himself up… was identified as Chakib Akrouh, born on August 27, 1990 in Belgium, of Belgian Moroccan nationality,” Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said.

Akrouh had been holed up in an apartment in the northern Paris suburb of Saint-Denis with the suspected ringleader of the Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who was also a Belgian of Moroccan origin.

A French woman, Hasna Aitboulahcen, who is thought to have been Abaaoud’s cousin and may have been in a relationship with him, was also there at dawn on November 18, five days after the attacks, when police tried to storm the building.

All three died after Akrouh detonated the suicide vest and police rained heavy gunfire on the building.

Prosecutors initially mistakenly said the woman had been the suicide bomber, before correcting their account.

— AFP contributed to this report.