Gunfire erupts in Paris as police hunt suspected attack leader

* Alleged mastermind of Paris attacks targeted in police raid

* Two militants die in raid, woman detonates suicide bomb

* Suspects holed up in apartment after shooting in St Denis area

* Two Air France flights from U.S. diverted due to security alerts

 

 SAINT DENIS, France - Gunfire and explosions shook the Paris suburb of St Denis early on Wednesday as French police surrounded a building where a Belgian Islamist militant suspected of masterminding last week's attacks in the French capital was believed to be holed up.

Two assailants were killed, including a woman who detonated a suicide bomb, a source close to the case said, adding that the police operation was continuing to flush out two other suspects.

The target of the raid, which filled the streets of St Denis with heavily armed police and soldiers, was Islamic State militant Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who was initially thought to have orchestrated the Paris attacks from Syria, police and justice sources said.

A judicial source said police had originally been hunting other suspects in St Denis, but now believed he was one of those barricaded in the building.

Shooting began at about 4.30 a.m. (0330 GMT) and police special forces of the RAID unit were still involved in exchanges of fire three hours later, witnesses said.

"The operation is still under way. It's not over," local member of parliament Mathieu Hanotin said on France Inter radio. "Everyone must stay indoors. There are still gunmen holed up in the apartment."

Three police officers and a passerby were injured in the assault.

A police source said three suspects had been arrested so far with security forces still trying to "neutralize" two more at the scene close to the Stade de France stadium which was one of the targets of last Friday's attacks.

The coordinated series of bombings and shootings killed 129 people, the worst atrocity in France since World War Two. Investigators soon linked the attacks to a militant cell in Belgium which was in contact with Islamic State in Syria.

The group claimed responsibility for killings, saying they were in retaliation for French air raids in Syria and Iraq over the past year. France has called for a global coalition to defeat the radicals and has launched three large airstrikes on Raqqa -- the de-facto Islamic State capital in northern Syria.

"LET'S GO"

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 saying "let's go".

The source said the phone was found in a dustbin near the Bataclan concert hall where 89 people died.

Late on Tuesday, the U.S. 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.

Authorities in the United States and Canada, where the planes landed, later said both aircraft had been searched and were safe.

On Tuesday night, 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.

Russia has also intensified its attacks on Islamic State targets in Syria after confirming that a bomb had downed a passenger airliner over Sinai last month, killing 224. The militants had previously claimed responsibility.

Paris and Moscow are not coordinating their operations, but French President Francois Hollande is due to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Nov. 26 to discuss how their countries' militaries might work together.

Hollande is due to meet U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington on Nov. 24 also to push for a concerted drive against Islamic State, which controls large parts of Syria and Iraq.

Obama said in Manila on Wednesday he wanted Moscow to shift its focus from propping up Syria's government to fighting Islamic State and would discuss that with Putin.

Russia is allied to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The West says he must go if there is to be a political solution to Syria's prolonged civil war.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Callus, David Brunnstrom, Matthias Blsamont, Marine Pennetier, Emmanuel Jarry, Marie-Louise Gumuchian, Jean-Baptiste Vey, Chine Labbé, Svebor Kranjc, John Irish in Paris, Alastair Macdonald and Robert-Jan Bartunek in Brussels, and Matt Spetalnick in Manila, Victoria Cavaliere and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles, Amran Abocar in Toronto and Dan Wallis in Denver; Writing by Alex Richardson and Crispian Balmer; Editing by Andrew Callus)

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

CIA chief warns Islamic State may have other attacks ready

WASHINGTON - CIA Director John Brennan warned on Monday that the attacks in Paris claimed by the extremist Islamic State movement were not a “one-off event” and that the militants may have similar operations ready to launch.

Foiling those plots, however, could prove difficult because Europe's intelligence and security resources are severely stretched trying to keep track of the hundreds of European extremists who have returned home from fighting in Syria and Iraq.

"A lot of our partners right now in Europe are facing a lot of challenges in terms of the numbers of individuals who have traveled to Syria and Iraq and back again, and so their ability to monitor and survey these individuals is under strain,” Brennan said.

Brennan’s comment at a Washington policy institute came as France, Belgium and other countries intensified a manhunt for suspects in Friday’s attacks on a concert hall, sports stadium, restaurants and bars in Paris that killed 129 people.

U.S. intelligence still hasn’t confirmed that the Islamic State was responsible, said Brennan. But, he added, the Paris attacks and the suspected bombing of a Russian airliner in Egypt on Oct. 31 that killed all 224 passengers and crew aboard “bear the hallmarks” of the Islamist group.

The Islamic State, which threatened in a new video on Monday to attack in Washington, appears to have formed an external operations branch that may have readied follow-up strikes to the Paris attacks, he said.

“I would anticipate that this is not the only operation that ISIL has in the pipeline,” Brennan said, using an acronym for the Islamic State. “And security intelligence services right now in Europe and other places are working feverishly to see what else they can do in terms of uncovering it.”

Careful planning for the Paris strikes is believed to have taken place over several months “in terms of making sure they had the operatives, the weapons, the explosives, the suicide belts,” Brennan said.

The attacks did not surprise the U.S. intelligence community, which had “strategic warning” that ISIL was planning to strike somewhere outside of the Middle East and was “looking at Europe in particular,” Brennan said.

“I certainly wouldn’t consider it (the Paris attacks) a one-off event,” he said.

One major problem is the huge burden that tracking extremists who’ve returned from Syria has imposed on resource-short European intelligence agencies, he said.

European officials estimate that as many as 5,000 Europeans have gone to fight in Syria since 2011. That number includes an estimated 1,400 French nationals, of whom some 900 have returned to France.

Moreover, between 10,000 and 20,000 individuals have been flagged by French authorities as potential security threats under a procedure known as an “S Notice,” said Roland Jacquard, a French counter-terrorism expert.

“We're in a situation where the services are overrun. They expect something to happen, but don't know where and you have to see how much stress they are under,” said Nathalie Goulet, the head of a French Senate investigation into jihadi networks.

Belgium, where investigators believe the Paris attacks were plotted, has been striving to keep track of more than 70 returnees from Syria. Officials estimate that 350 Belgium nationals have gone there to fight.

U.S. and European officials say that as many as two dozen to three dozen officers must work around the clock to keep a single suspect under full-time surveillance.

At least two men identified by French investigators as having carried out the Paris attacks were known to European and U.S. intelligence agencies before the carnage.

A Belgian man suspected of masterminding the attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was identified in the New York Times in January as a prime suspect in a foiled plot to strike targets in Brussels. He also was known to U.S. spy agencies, said a U.S. government source.

Another problem confronting intelligence services is that militant groups have intensified their security measures as a result of “unauthorized disclosures,” said Brennan.

While he did not elaborate, Brennan may have been referring to former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden’s revelations of the agency’s massive communications monitoring operations and leaks of classified documents by Wikileaks.

(Reporting by Jonathan S. Landay; Editing by Alistair Bell and Stuart Grudgings)

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Europe on high terror alert

Europe remained on high alert Sunday as the suspected mastermind of a jihadist cell in Belgium remained at large and anti-Islamist rallies were blocked by nervous authorities in Germany and France.

Amid the heightened tensions, the second gunman in the Charlie Hebdo magazine attack was given a secretive burial in an unmarked grave near Paris late on Saturday, designed to ensure it did not become "a pilgrimage site" for radical Islamists.

Meanwhile, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, considered the brains behind the cell plotting to kill Belgian police, was still on the run days after the group was busted by intelligence services.

DNA tests showed the 27-year-old was not among suspects arrested in Athens and is still at large, Belgium's Justice Minister Koen Geens told VRT television.

German police banned a rally by the anti-Islamic PEGIDA movement and other open-air gatherings planned for Monday in the eastern city of Dresden, saying there was a "concrete threat" of an attack against its leadership.

The PEGIDA marches have grown steadily since they began in October and drew a record 25,000 people last Monday in the wake of the Paris attacks that left 17 people dead.

The group claimed the threat came from the Islamic State group based in Syria and Iraq, with local media reporting that PEGIDA's most prominent leader Lutz Bachmann was the target.

Also on Sunday, a French court prevented a rally by anti-Islamist groups in Paris on the grounds that they were promoting Islamophobia.

Discreet burials

Cherif Kouachi, one of two brothers who killed 12 people in the attack on satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo on January 7, was buried in a cemetery in Gennevilliers, a day after the funeral of his older brother Said in the northeastern city of Reims.

Cherif's family, including his widow, kept away from the funeral, the mayor's office said.

The brothers were shot dead by police after a three-day manhunt following their attack on Charlie Hebdo, which had enraged many Muslims around the world with its repeated publication of cartoons lampooning Islam's Prophet Mohammed.

Anger erupted in a string of majority Muslim countries after the magazine responded to the decimation of its staff by running another caricature last week, showing the prophet under the headline "All is forgiven".

The worst unrest was in Niger, where at least 10 people were killed and eight churches torched over two days of rioting.

Around 1,000 youths wielding iron bars, clubs and axes rampaged through the capital on Saturday, hurling rocks at police who responded with tear gas.

Charlie Hebdo's chief editor has defended the cartoons.

"Every time we draw a cartoon of Mohammed, every time we draw a cartoon of prophets, every time we draw a cartoon of God, we defend the freedom of religion," Gerard Biard told NBC's "Meet the Press" programme.

The weekly has sold 2.7 million copies of the post-killings "survivors' issue" in France alone and said it would extend its print run to seven million copies -- up from only 60,000 normally.

President Francois Hollande said France was committed to "freedom of expression" and people should not change their habits since "to do so would be to yield to terrorism".

But a poll published in Le Journal du Dimanche found 42 percent of French people thought publications should avoid running cartoons of Mohammed, and 50 percent favoured limiting freedom of expression on the Internet and social networks.

A memorial rally was due to be held in Paris on Sunday for policewoman Clarissa Jean-Philippe, who was gunned down by Amedy Coulibaly, another Islamist gunman who claimed to be working with the Kouachi brothers and was also shot dead by police.

He had killed four Jews in a siege at a kosher supermarket in Paris on January 9.

French investigators were focusing on 12 people detained Friday and being questioned over "possible logistical support" they may have given to the Paris gunmen, sources said.

Britain will hold a meeting on Thursday of the coalition against the Islamic State group, which one of the Paris gunmen claimed to represent, hosted by Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond and US Secretary of State John Kerry.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com