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| Flowers are set in a window shattered by a bullet at the Carillon cafe in Paris, France, Sunday Nov. 15, 2015, two days after over 120 people were killed in a series of shooting and explosions. French troops deployed around Paris on Sunday and tourist sites stood shuttered in one of the most visited cities on Earth while investigators questioned the relatives of a suspected suicide bomber involved in the country's deadliest violence since World War II. |
PARIS
(AP) -- 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 U.S. forces.
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.
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.
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.
