Police sources have said that one of the targets of the ongoing police raids in Saint-Denis in Paris is be Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected mastermind of the November 13 Paris attacks.
Abaaoud, a.k.a. Abu Umar al-Baljiki ("the Belgian"), is a 27-year-old low-level IS militant from Belgium. He was thought to have been killed fighting alongside IS in Syria last fall, according to the New York Times. But Abaaoud was actually on his way back to Europe -- and has since been linked to a series of terror operations that ended with last week's massacre in the French capital.
In January, Belgian police raided a safe house for militants in Verviers that Abaaoud helped set up -- but the operation, which killed two of his fellow militants, missed Abaaoud.
Abaaoud would appear in the February 2015 edition of IS's glossy propaganda magazine, Dabiq, which lauded the Belgian militant as "a mujahid being pursued by Western intelligence agencies for his jihad in Belgium."
-- Joanna Paraszczuk
Police and security services have evacuated residents from the north Paris suburb of Saint-Denis during the raid.
Some civilians who lived in the area near the raid and who were evacuated to the local town hall have been taken to ambulances, reporter Harold Doornbos says.
-- Joanna Paraszczuk
- By Joanna Paraszczuk
Video footage has started to emerge of the raids in Saint-Denis.
Sky News tweeted this short clip in which heavy gunfire is heard.
Explosions were heard during CNN's live report from the scene earlier on November 18.
- By Joanna Paraszczuk
Brett Mason from Australia's SBS News reports that French RAID officers are trying to access the apartment in Saint-Denis, which they fear could be rigged with explosives. Police are also using binoculars to scan nearby rooftops and apartments, Mason tweeted.
- By Joanna Paraszczuk
The police raid on an apartment in Saint-Denis where suspects in the November 13 Paris massacre were holed up is ongoing. At least one suspect is reported to be still inside the apartment, according to a source at the local town hall who spoke to France24. The police are saying that one suspect is still in the apartment.
- By Joanna Paraszczuk
A statement from the Paris Prosecutor on the Saint-Denis raid near Paris confirms that one suicide bomber has died, three arrests were made in the apartment and two more nearby.