Third body found at site of Paris police raid

PARIS – A third body has been found in the rubble of an apartment where the suspected ringleader of the Paris attacks was killed in a fierce shootout with police, prosecutors said yesterday.

The body of a woman was also found in the apartment in the northern Paris suburb of Saint-Denis in the Wednesday raid, which killed the man suspected of orchestrating the attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud.

In a statement issued yesterday, authorities said a handbag was found containing the passport of Abaaoud’s female cousin Hasna Ait Boulahcen, who was suspected of dying in the raid.

The identity of the third body was not disclosed by the prosecutors, who have said a suicide bomber blew themselves up as hundreds of armed police stormed the apartment in the dawn raid.

In Aulnay- Sous- Bois, the French police investigating the Paris attacks raided the home of the mother of the woman believed to have blown herself up during the raid.

Two people died in Wednesday’s seven-hour police siege targeting a building in the northern Paris suburb of Saint-Denis: Islamic State jihadist Abdelhamid Abaaoud and the woman who detonated an explosive vest during the raid.

A source close to the probe said investigators believe the woman was 26-year-old Hasna Ait Boulahcen, a cousin of Abaaoud, the ringleader of the devastating attacks in the French capital on Friday night that left 129 people dead.

In a clip filmed by local residents as police stormed the Saint Denis building early on Wednesday, an exchange can be heard.

“Where is your boyfriend? Where is he?” shouts a police officer and a high- pitched voice can be heard shouting back, “He’s not my boyfriend.” Then several explosions can be heard.

Speaking to AFP before the police raid on their home, both her mother and her brother said they recognized her voice from the recording immediately.

“It’s brainwashing,” her mother said of her daughter’s radicalization over the past six months.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, her brother said she had suddenly become radicalized about six months ago and began wearing a full-faced veil or niqab.

“She was unstable, she created her own bubble. She wasn’t looking to study religion, I have never even seen her open a Koran,” he told AFP.

A source close to the investigation said a raid was carried out at her mother’s house in Aulnay-sous-Bois, a town northeast of Paris where Boulahcen had returned to live some six months ago.

“The whole neighborhood is completely cordoned off by police. They are letting no one enter or go out,” a resident of the town told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The woman lived at the home with her mother and other siblings until about three weeks ago.

“She decided to go and live with a friend in Drancy. On Wednesday I turned on my television and learned she had killed herself,” said her brother.

Drancy is a town a short drive away from Aulnay-sous-Bois.