Two suspected terrorists holed up in an apartment north of Paris died during a police siege on Wednesday, including a woman who detonated an explosives vest, according to police sources.
At least three police were injured in the operation targeting Belgian terrorist Abdelhamid Abaaoud, believed to be the mastermind of the attacks in Paris on Friday that killed 129.
Around 50 French soldiers were deployed to the northern Paris suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis where the shoot-out was under way between police and the suspected terrorists.
They were posted along the main high street near an apartment where people, believed to be linked to Friday’s attacks, were holed up and large explosions and firing could be heard.
Police said earlier between two and four people were holed up in the apartment.
The area is home to the Stade de France, one of several places hit by gunmen and suicide bombers on Friday in the worst ever attack on French soil, which was claimed by the Islamic State (Daesh) terrorist group.
The early morning raid comes as Europe was on high alert after footage from the scene of one of Friday’s attacks revealed a ninth suspect may have taken part.
It was not clear if this ninth man was one of two suspected accomplices detained in Belgium or was on the run, potentially with 26-year-old fugitive Frenchman Salah Abdeslam who carried out one of the attacks at Bonne Biere cafe along with his suicide-bomber brother Brahim.
French President Francois Hollande on Wednesday will hold a meeting to discuss proposals to extend by three months the state of emergency declared after the worst attacks in French history. It will then be put to vote by lawmakers Thursday and Friday.
In a sign of the nervousness gripping Europe after Friday’s carnage, a football match between Germany and the Netherlands was cancelled Tuesday and the crowd evacuated after police acted on a “serious” bomb threat.
As police stepped up the hunt for the fugitives, French and Russian jets pounded IS targets in the group’s Syrian stronghold of Raqa in Syria for a third consecutive day.
France and Russia have vowed merciless retaliation for the Paris attacks and last month’s bombing of a Russian airliner, also claimed by the Islamic State group, which have galvanised international resolve to destroy the terrorists and end Syria’s more than four-year civil war.
“It’s necessary to establish direct contact with the French and work with them as allies,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said as France prepared to send an aircraft carrier to the eastern Mediterranean.
Hollande will meet Putin in Moscow on November 26, two days after seeing US President Barack Obama in Washington.
Police have issued the photograph of one of the three men who blew themselves up outside the Stade de France, who investigators have established entered Europe through Greece, as hundreds of thousands of refugees have done this year.
He was found with a Syrian passport near his body, but investigators have not confirmed that he was the man in the document and are appealing for anyone who recognises him to come forward.
French, Russian rapprochement
France has invoked a previously unused European Union article to ask member states for help in its mission to fight back against the Islamic State organisation, receiving unanimous backing from Brussels.
But France also appears to be forging an unexpected alliance with Russia, which it has clashed with over the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria, after both countries were targeted by Daesh in deadly attacks.
On Tuesday, Russia finally confirmed that the Russian passenger jet that crashed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula last month, killing 224 people, had been brought down by a bomb, though it did not name any responsible group.
The Kremlin said Putin and Hollande had “agreed to assure closer contact and coordination between the military and security service agencies of the two countries in actions against terrorist groups… in Syria”.
The alliance comes as international players meet to discuss ways of ending the Syrian war, which has spurred the rise of the Daesh group, forced millions into exile and triggered Europe’s worst migrant crisis since World War II.
On a solidarity visit to Paris, US Secretary of State John Kerry said a “big transition” in Syria was probably only weeks away after Iran, Russia and Saudi Arabia reached agreement at the weekend on a path towards elections.
Still, regime and opposition representatives have yet to sit down together and there is little agreement on the role of Assad in any transition, a key sticking point in the talks.
Back in the United States, more than half of all state governors on Tuesday took steps to force the White House to freeze programmes for the resettlement of Syrian and Iraqi refugees, citing concerns about attacks.
Highlighting US fears over the attack, two Air France flights bound for Paris from the United States were diverted Tuesday and landed safely after anonymous threats the carrier called a “bomb scare.”
