FRANCE DEPLOYS TROOPS TO BOOST SECURITY
With terror cell members still at large, 10,000 troops deployed to protect sensitive sites
PARIS — As many as six members of a terrorist cell involved in the Paris attacks may still be at large, including a man who was seen driving a car registered to the widow of one of the gunmen, French police said Monday.
The disclosure came as France deployed 10,000 troops to protect sensitive sites — including Jewish schools and neighbourhoods — in the wake of the attacks that killed 17 people last week.
Brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi and their friend, Amedy Coulibaly, were killed Friday by police after a murderous spree at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket. The three all claimed ties to Islamic extremists in the Middle East.
Two police officials told the Associated Press that authorities were searching the Paris area for the Mini Cooper registered to Hayat Boumeddiene, Coulibaly’s widow. Turkish officials say she is now in Syria.
One of the police officials said the cell consisted of about 10 members, and that “five or six could still be at large,” but he did not provide their names. The other official said the cell was made up of about eight people and included Boumeddiene.
One of the other men believed to be part of the cell has been seen driving Boumeddiene’s car around Paris in recent days, the two officials said.
One of the police officials also said Coulibaly apparently set off a car bomb Thursday in the town of Villejuif, but no one was injured and it did not receive significant media attention at the time.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the manhunt is urgent because “the threat is still present” from the attacks.
By midday Monday, soldiers and police filled the Marais district of Paris — one of the country’s oldest Jewish neighbourhoods. About 4,700 of the security forces would be assigned to protect France’s 717 Jewish schools, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the kosher market. Volunteers, meanwhile, recited prayers over the bodies of some victims as they were prepared for burial by the Jewish Burial Society in Paris.
The attacks began Wednesday with 12 people killed at the publication Charlie Hebdo, which had lampooned Islam and other religions, by gunmen the police identified as the Kouachi brothers. Police have said, however, that the attack was carried out by three people.
Authorities said Coulibaly killed a policewoman Thursday and then killed four people at the kosher market Friday before he was slain by police.