France launched "massive" air strikes on the Islamic State group's
de-facto capital in Syria Sunday night, destroying a jihadi training
camp and a munitions dump in the city of Raqqa, where Iraqi intelligence
officials say
the attacks on Paris were planned.
Twelve aircraft including 10 fighter jets dropped a total of 20 bombs
in the biggest air strikes since France extended its bombing campaign
against the extremist group to Syria in September, a Defense Ministry
statement said. The jets launched from sites in Jordan and the Persian
Gulf, in coordination with US forces.
READ more: AN ACT OF WAR
Meanwhile, as police announced seven arrests and hunted for more
members of the sleeper cell that carried out the Paris attacks that
killed 129 people, French officials revealed to The Associated Press
that several key suspects had been stopped and released by police after
the attack.
The arrest warrant for Salah Abdeslam, a 26-year-old born in
Brussels, calls him very dangerous and warns people not to intervene if
they see him.
Yet police already had him in their grasp early Saturday, when they
stopped a car carrying three men near the Belgian border. By then, hours
had passed since authorities identified Abdeslam as the renter of a
Volkswagen Polo that carried hostage takers to the Paris theater
where so many died.
Also READ: France's fragile economy under siege after Paris attacks
Three
French police officials and a top French security official confirmed
that officers let Abdeslam go after checking his ID. They spoke on
condition of anonymity, lacking authorization to publicly disclose such
details.
Tantalizing clues about the extent of the plot have emerged from
Baghdad, where senior Iraqi officials told the AP that France and other
countries had been warned on Thursday of an imminent attack.
An Iraqi intelligence dispatch warned that Islamic State group leader
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had ordered his followers to immediately launch
gun and bomb attacks and take hostages inside the countries of the
coalition fighting them in Iraq and Syria.
The Iraqi dispatch, which was obtained by the AP, provided no details
on when or where the attack would take place, and a senior French
security official told the AP that French intelligence gets these kinds
of warnings "all the time" and "every day."
However, Iraqi intelligence officials told the AP that they also
warned France about specific details: Among them, that the attackers
were trained for this operation and sent back to France from Raqqa, the
Islamic State's de-facto capital.
The officials also said that a sleeper cell in France then met with
the attackers after their training and helped them to execute the plan.
There were 24 people involved in the operation, they said: 19 attackers
and five others in charge of logistics and planning.
None of these details have been corroborated by officials of France or other Western intelligence agencies.
All these French and Iraqi security and intelligence officials spoke
with the AP on condition of anonymity, citing the ongoing investigation.
Abdeslam is one of three brothers believed to be involved; One who
crossed with him into Belgium was later arrested, and another blew
himself up inside the Bataclan theater after taking the audience hostage
and firing on them repeatedly.
It was the worst of Friday's synchronized attacks, leaving 89 fatalities and hundreds of people wounded inside.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility. Its statement mocked
France's air attacks on suspected IS targets in Syria and Iraq, and
called Paris "the capital of prostitution and obscenity."
In all, three teams of attackers including seven suicide bombers
attacked the national stadium, the concert hall and nearby nightspots.
The attacks wounded 350 people, 99 of them seriously.
Abdeslam rented the black Volkswagen Polo used by the hostage-takers,
another French security official said. A Brussels parking ticket found
inside led police to at least one of the arrests in Belgium, a French
police official said.
Three Kalashnikovs were found inside another car known to have been
used in the attacks that was found in Montreuil, an eastern Parisian
suburb, another a French police official said.
As many as three of the seven suicide bombers were French
citizens, as was at least one of the men arrested in the Molenbeek
neighborhood of Brussells, which authorities consider to be a focal
point for extremists and fighters going to Syria from Belgium.
Belgian
Interior Minister Jan Jambon, speaking to The Associated Press by
phone, said suspects arrested in Molenbeek had been stopped previously
in Cambrai, France, "in a regular roadside check" but that police had
had no suspicion about them at the time and they were let go quickly.
One,
identified by the print on a recovered finger, was 29-year-old
Frenchman Ismael Mostefai, who had a record of petty crime and had been
flagged in 2010 for ties to Islamic radicalism, the Paris prosecutor
said. A judicial official and lawmaker Jean-Pierre Gorges confirmed his
identity.
A judicial official said police have also identified two other of the
suicide bombers, both French nationals who'd been living in Belgium:
20-year-old Bilal Hadfi, who detonated himself outside the Stade de
France; and 31-year-old Brahim Abdeslam, the brother of fugitive Salah
Abdeslam, who blew himself up on the Boulevard Voltaire.
Police detained Mostefai's father, a brother and other relatives
Saturday night, and they were still being questioned Sunday, the
judicial official said.
These details stoked fears of homegrown terrorism in France, which
has exported more jihadis than any other in Europe, and seen many return
from the fight. All three gunmen in the January attacks on the Charlie
Hebdo newspaper and a kosher supermarket in Paris were French.
The attackers inside the Bataclan seemed quite young,
according to one survivor, Julien Pearce, a journalist at Europe 1 radio
who escaped by crawling onto the stage, and then out an exit door when
the shooters paused to reload. Before making his final dash, he got a
good look at one of the assailants, he said.
"He seemed very young. That's what struck me, his childish face, very determined, cold, calm, frightening," Pearce said.
Struggling to keep his country calm and united after an exceptionally
violent year, President Francois Hollande met Sunday with opposition
leaders — conservative rival and former President Nicolas Sarkozy as
well as increasingly popular far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who has
used the attacks on Paris to advance her anti-immigrant agenda.
Refugees fleeing war by the tens of thousands fear the Paris attacks
could prompt Europe to close its doors, especially after police said a
Syrian passport found next to one attacker's body suggested its owner
passed through Greece into the European Union and on through Macedonia
and Serbia last month.
Paris remains on edge amid three days of official mourning. French
troops have deployed by the thousands and tourist sites remain shuttered
in one of the most visited cities on Earth. Panic ensued Sunday night
as police abruptly cleared hundreds of mourners from the famed Place de
la Republique square, where police said firecrackers sparked a false
alarm.
"Whoever starts running starts everyone else running," said Alice
Carton, city council member who was at the square. "It's a very weird
atmosphere. The sirens and screaming are a source of fear."
Officers also moved in, guns drawn, after mourners panicked near the
Carillon bar, where crowds have laid flowers and lit candles in memory
of the 15 people killed there.
"Lots of people started running and screaming from the
Carillon...tables were overturned, plates shattered. It was a terrible
panic," said Jonathan Dogan, who took shelter in a nearby hotel. "I
think people are terrified," Dogan said.
