Three suspects linked to Friday’s deadly attacks in Paris died after French police raided two separate sites in Saint-Denis, a northern suburb of the French capital, sources told Al Jazeera.
The suspects were shot by police, the sources said, as Reuters news agency reported that a female suspect killed herself by detonating a vest rigged with explosives.
The identity of the casualties was not immediately released. However, French media said the target of the operation was Belgian national Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a key suspect of Friday’s attacks, in which at least 129 people were killed.
Another suspect, Salah Abdeslam, was also said to be a target in the raids.
Police said some of the suspects were holed up in an apartment in the suburb early on Wednesday. Three police officers were wounded in an initial shootout, sources told Al Jazeera.
Residents of the area in northern Paris first reported hearing bursts of gunfire at 4:30am (3:30 GMT), as police exchanged fire with one or more suspects.
After a short lull in the operation, at least seven explosions were heard at 6:30 GMT, Al Jazeera’s Jacky Rowland reported from the scene.
Heavily armed special police units and ambulances were gathering at the scene as a helicopter was hovering over the area, Al Jazeera’s Rowland reported.
“Saint-Denis is a relatively poor area, housing many immigrants. It is near the area of the national stadium Stade de France, where suicide bombers claimed several lives during Friday’s attacks,” Rowland said.
Police were telling onlookers to clear the vicinity of the operation and blocked off a street in the area, as ambulances and fire engines lined the streets a stone’s throw from the centre of Saint-Denis.
Friday night’s attacks in the French capital, claimed by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), raised security concerns around the world, with an international football match called off in Germany and two Air France flights from the United States diverted.
French President Francois Hollande on Wednesday will hold a meeting to discuss proposals to extend by three months the state of emergency declared after the worst attacks in French history.
It will then be put to vote by lawmakers on Thursday and Friday.
Bomb threat
In a sign of the nervousness gripping Europe after Friday’s carnage, a football match between Germany and the Netherlands was cancelled on Tuesday and the crowd evacuated after police acted on a “serious” bomb threat.
As police stepped up the hunt for the fugitives, French and Russian jets pounded Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) targets in the group’s self-proclaimed capital of Raqqa in Syria for a third consecutive day.
France and Russia have vowed merciless retaliation for the Paris attacks and last month’s bombing of a Russian airliner, also claimed by ISIL, which have galvanised international resolve to destroy the group and end Syria’s more than four-year civil war.
“It’s necessary to establish direct contact with the French and work with them as allies,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said as France prepared to send an aircraft carrier to the eastern Mediterranean.
Hollande will meet Putin in Moscow on November 26, two days after seeing US President Barack Obama in Washington.(Al Jazeera)
Link: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/11/shots-reported-paris-northern-saint-denis-area-151118034913465.html
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