The alleged mastermind of the Paris massacre, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was killed yesterday during the French police blitz in Saint-Denis. The recognition of the "body riddled with bullets" came thanks to the comparison of fingerprints. The news was officially confirmed today by the Paris Public Prosecutor's Office.
Intelligence sources had initially said that Salah Abdeslam, 26, French, also considered one of the masterminds of the massacre, would also be killed. But later the French premier Valls said that the terrorist is still on the run and that he continues the hunt. According to the latest rumors he was seen in Anderlecht, five kilometers from Brussels.
Belgian, 28, Abaaoud was found in the rubble of an apartment devastated by a firefight that lasted six hours, a few kilometers from Charles de Gaulle airport and 12 kilometers from La Défense, which, according to US intelligence sources, were the next targets of the bombers.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls announced Abaaoud's death during a meeting of the National Assembly, which welcomed the news with applause. Today, MEPs voted on the bill that strengthens and extends for three months the state of emergency decreed by President François Hollande on Friday evening, immediately after the massacre.
Of Moroccan origin, Abaaoud was allegedly part of the Belgian jihadist cell in Verviers, which was vanquished in January and has been reported in Syria for the past two years. There Abaaoud climbed the hierarchies of Isis, which allegedly entrusted him with the task of training jihadists planning attacks in Europe.
Abaaoud is known in the Raqqa region, the capital of the Black Caliphate in Syria after appearing in a video where he drives a 4×4 dragging various bodies. He is a friend of Salah Abdeslam, one of the Paris bombers, and last February he granted a long interview to Dabiq, the Isis magazine, under his nom de guerre Abu Umar Al Baljiki (the Belgian), telling how he managed to escaping the controls of the Belgian police several times.
According to various sources, Abaaoud was in contact with Ayoub El-Khazzani, perpetrator of the August 21 attack on the Thalys Amsterdam-Paris train. Other sources say he was in contact with Sid Ahmed Ghlam, an Algerian student who planned attacks on the churches of Villejuif (Val-de-Marne) in April. It is almost certain that the man knew Mehdi Nemmouche, perpetrator of the massacre at the Jewish museum in Brussels in May 2014, who briefly passed through Molenbeek. Abaaoud took his 15-year-old younger brother Younès to Syria a few months ago.
