‘Two jihadists’ killed, two arrests in north Paris shootout
SAINT-DENIS, France (AFP/ Reuters) – Two suspected jihadists were killed, including a woman who blew herself up, in a shootout Wednesday in north Paris with police hunting the mastermind of last week’s attacks on the French capital, sources said.
As troops patrolled the streets, heavily-armed police swapped gunfire with people holed up in an apartment in the suburb of Saint-Denis, police sources said.
Two people in the apartment were killed, including a woman who blew herself up, and a third was still inside, and at least three police were injured, they said. Two arrests were made.
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 jihadist group.
In Syria, France and Russia bombed targets to punish Islamic State for the coordinated Paris massacre and the downing of a Russian airliner over Sinai on Oct. 31.
French TV stations BFMTV and iTele both showed amateur video of Wednesday’s early morning shooting and cited witnesses in the area as saying they had heard sporadic gunfire from around 4:30 a.m. (10.30 p.m. ET).
BFMTV said some police had been wounded during the operation, which took place near the Stade de France sports stadium where three suicide bombers detonated their explosive belts and killed a passer-by on Friday.
French prosecutors have identified five of the seven dead assailants from Friday–four Frenchmen and a man who was fingerprinted in Greece among refugees last month.
But they now believe two men directly involved in the assault subsequently escaped.
Wednesday’s operation came after a source with knowledge of the investigation said a cell phone had been found with a map of the music venue targeted in one of the attacks and a text message on it saying words to the effect of “let’s go”.
The source said the phone was found in a dustbin near the Bataclan concert hall where the bloodiest of the shootings took place.
Islamic State said it carried out the attacks in retaliation for French and Rus- sian air raids in Iraq and Syria. Investigators said the Paris plot was hatched in Syria and nurtured in Belgium.
Late on Tuesday, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said two Paris-bound Air France flights were diverted following anonymous bomb threats, and hundreds of passengers and crew were safely removed.
Flight 65, an Airbus A-380 that had departed from Los Angeles, landed safely in Salt Lake City where passengers and crew were escorted into the terminal, an FAA spokesman said.
A separate flight that left Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C., Flight 55, was diverted to Halifax International Airport in Nova Scotia, Canada, where passengers and crew had also disembarked. The Halifax Airport tweeted that 262 passengers and crew members had been aboard.
In a brief statement, Air France said both flights had been the “subjects of anonymous threats received after their respective take-offs”.
Earlier, bomb fears had prompted German police to call off a soccer match between Germany and the Netherlands in Hanover two hours before kick-off. German Chancellor Angela Merkel had been due to attend.
No arrests were made and no explosives were found.
had received specific indications that an attack with explosives was planned,” Hanover Police President Volker Kluwe told NDR state broadcaster. “We took them seriously, and that is why we took the measures.”
France and Germany were playing a soccer friendly at the Stade de France when Friday’s attacks took place.
AIR STRIKES IN SYRIA Syrian targets hit by Russian longrange bombers and cruise missiles on Tuesday included the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa. French warplanes also targeted Raqqa on Tuesday evening in the third such bombing raid within 48 hours.
Paris and Moscow are not coordinating their operations, but French President Francois Hollande has called for a global campaign against the radicals in the wake of the Paris attacks.
Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to hunt down those responsible and intensify air strikes against Islamists in Syria.
The Kremlin said Putin spoke to Hollande by telephone and had ordered the Russian navy to establish contact with a French naval force heading to the eastern Mediterranean, led by an aircraft carrier, and to treat them as allies.
“Maybe today this grand coalition with Russia is possible,” French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told TF1 television channel on Tuesday evening.