BBC Online :
A third body has been recovered from the apartment in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis raided by police after last Friday’s attacks, prosecutors say.
They confirmed the body was that of 26-year-old Hasna Aitboulahcen, and was found overnight in a search of the flat following Wednesday morning’s raid. Hasna Aitboulahcen is widely reported to have been the
cousin of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, and blew herself up.
Abaaoud, the suspected ringleader, was also killed in the raid. The near-simultaneous attacks by suicide bombers and gunmen on bars and restaurants, a concert hall and sports stadium last Friday killed 129 people and left hundreds of people wounded.
Islamic State (IS) said it was behind the attacks. Demonstrations have been banned under France’s state of emergency, but dozens of French artists and cultural figures have urged people to make a lot of “noise and light”, by turning on music and lights, at 21:20 (20:20 GMT) on Friday to mark the exact time a week ago that the attacks began.
Prosecutors have now confirmed the identities of two of the three suspects who died in the seven-hour-long raid in the Rue Cormillon apartment on Wednesday morning. The prosecutor’s office said Hasna Aitboulahcen’s passport was found near her body.
News that Abaaoud – a well-known face of IS and on international “most wanted” lists – and at least one of his accomplices may have travelled undetected from Syria before carrying out the attacks has raised fears about the security of the European Union’s borders.
EU interior ministers are meeting in Brussels to discuss tougher measures, including tightening the external borders of the passport-free Schengen area. France’s Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, on his way into the meeting, said the EU had “wasted too much time on a number of urgent issues” and hoped “today takes the decisions that we must take”.
A draft resolution for Friday’s EU meeting says ministers will agree to implement “necessary systematic and co-ordinated checks at external borders, including on individuals enjoying the right of free movement”. This means EU citizens, along with non-EU citizens, will have their passports routinely checked against a database of known or suspected terrorists and those involved in organised crime. Ministers will also consider cracking down on the movement of firearms within the EU, the collection of passenger data for those taking internal flights and also blocking funding for terrorists.
The key to all of this will be the co-operation and sharing of intelligence and information between EU countries, notes the BBC’s Alex Forsyth in Brussels.
Germany’s interior minister Thomas de Maiziere said he hoped that by the end of the year they would be able to “ensure that each person who flies to Europe is recognised”, and pointed out that there is currently no exchange of information on the gun trade in Europe.
“We can only fight terrorism with a better information exchange,” he said. In a stark warning of the dangers facing Europe, Germany’s head of domestic intelligence, Hans-Georg Maassen, told the BBC that IS was “starting a terrorist world war”.
He said IS had made Europe its enemy and European countries had to “assume something like Paris can happen any time”. He also said he was concerned that Islamist extremists could recruit refugees from Syria, now housed in camps in Germany and other parts of Europe, who may have been trained in the use of weapons during four years of civil war.
A third body has been recovered from the apartment in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis raided by police after last Friday’s attacks, prosecutors say.
They confirmed the body was that of 26-year-old Hasna Aitboulahcen, and was found overnight in a search of the flat following Wednesday morning’s raid. Hasna Aitboulahcen is widely reported to have been the
cousin of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, and blew herself up.
Abaaoud, the suspected ringleader, was also killed in the raid. The near-simultaneous attacks by suicide bombers and gunmen on bars and restaurants, a concert hall and sports stadium last Friday killed 129 people and left hundreds of people wounded.
Islamic State (IS) said it was behind the attacks. Demonstrations have been banned under France’s state of emergency, but dozens of French artists and cultural figures have urged people to make a lot of “noise and light”, by turning on music and lights, at 21:20 (20:20 GMT) on Friday to mark the exact time a week ago that the attacks began.
Prosecutors have now confirmed the identities of two of the three suspects who died in the seven-hour-long raid in the Rue Cormillon apartment on Wednesday morning. The prosecutor’s office said Hasna Aitboulahcen’s passport was found near her body.
News that Abaaoud – a well-known face of IS and on international “most wanted” lists – and at least one of his accomplices may have travelled undetected from Syria before carrying out the attacks has raised fears about the security of the European Union’s borders.
EU interior ministers are meeting in Brussels to discuss tougher measures, including tightening the external borders of the passport-free Schengen area. France’s Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, on his way into the meeting, said the EU had “wasted too much time on a number of urgent issues” and hoped “today takes the decisions that we must take”.
A draft resolution for Friday’s EU meeting says ministers will agree to implement “necessary systematic and co-ordinated checks at external borders, including on individuals enjoying the right of free movement”. This means EU citizens, along with non-EU citizens, will have their passports routinely checked against a database of known or suspected terrorists and those involved in organised crime. Ministers will also consider cracking down on the movement of firearms within the EU, the collection of passenger data for those taking internal flights and also blocking funding for terrorists.
The key to all of this will be the co-operation and sharing of intelligence and information between EU countries, notes the BBC’s Alex Forsyth in Brussels.
Germany’s interior minister Thomas de Maiziere said he hoped that by the end of the year they would be able to “ensure that each person who flies to Europe is recognised”, and pointed out that there is currently no exchange of information on the gun trade in Europe.
“We can only fight terrorism with a better information exchange,” he said. In a stark warning of the dangers facing Europe, Germany’s head of domestic intelligence, Hans-Georg Maassen, told the BBC that IS was “starting a terrorist world war”.
He said IS had made Europe its enemy and European countries had to “assume something like Paris can happen any time”. He also said he was concerned that Islamist extremists could recruit refugees from Syria, now housed in camps in Germany and other parts of Europe, who may have been trained in the use of weapons during four years of civil war.
