France, Russia and UK launch attacks on Syria and Iraq as five people are held in Germany and two in Belgium while two fugitives are still on the run

French, Russian, British and US warplanes have struck Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq as the harrowing attacks carried out by the jihadi group in Paris spurred international efforts to crush the terrorist organisation.

The collective resolve on Tuesday came as police forces across Europe stepped up investigations into Friday’s wave of shootings and suicide bombings in Paris bars and restaurants, a packed concert hall and a sports stadium.

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Five suspects were being held in Germany and two in Belgium, while French officials told AP a second, unnamed fugitive was the subject of an international manhunt, as well as 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam, one of two Belgium-based French brothers implicated in the attacks.

But four days after the bloodshed, French authorities admitted that the extent of the Syria-run, Brussels-based terror cell that carried out the attacks, the worst in France since the second world war, was still unclear.

“We don’t know if there are accomplices in Belgium and in France … we still don’t know the number of people involved in the attacks,” the prime minister, Manuel Valls, told French radio. Iraqi intelligence officials have said their information suggests up to 24 people were directly or indirectly involved.

The US secretary of state, John Kerry, condemned the perpetrators of Friday’s attacks, which killed 129 people and wounded more than 350, as “psychopathic monsters”. He said during a visit to Paris that a political process agreed during peace talks in Vienna on Saturday was a “gigantic step”, adding: “We’re weeks away conceivably from the possibility of a big transition for Syria.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A picture provided by the Belgian police of Paris terror attack suspect Salah Abdeslam. Photograph: Belgian Federal police/EPA

“My sense is that everybody understands that … we have to step up our efforts to hit them at the core, where they’re planning these things,” Kerry said after meeting the French president, François Hollande.

The aerial onslaught on Raqqa, the de-facto capital of Isis in Syria, followed Hollande’s call on Monday for the US and Russia to join a global coalition to destroy the terror group. He said France was “at war … against jihadi terrorism which is threatening the whole world”.



Promising “no respite and no truce”, Hollande dispatched the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle to the eastern Mediterranean, tripling France’s capacity to carry out airstrikes in the region.

In a second series of airstrikes in 24 hours, 10 French warplanes launched from the United Arab Emirates and Jordan dropped 16 bombs on a command and recruitment centre for jihadis, while in London the British Ministry of Defence said RAF Tornado bombers had attacked a large group of more than 20 Isis terrorists in northern Iraq.

Moscow, too, was seeking retribution after it confirmed on Tuesday that a bomb brought down a Russian passenger jet over Egypt last month, killing 224 people. The Kremlin said it would further intensify airstrikes against the Islamist militants in Syria with long-range bombers and cruise missiles.



The Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, said the country’s warplanes had fired cruise missiles at militant positions in Syria’s Idlib and Aleppo provinces, while Russian bombers hit Isis positions in Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor.

Vladimir Putin vowed to hunt down those responsible for blowing up the airliner and ordered the Russian missile cruiser Moskva, currently in the Mediterranean, to establish contact with French naval forces in the region and treat them as allies. “We need to work out a plan with them of joint sea and air actions,” the Russian president told his military chiefs.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Officers of a German special operations team in Alsdorf. Photograph: Ralf Roeger/EPA

The Élysée Palace said Hollande was due to meet Putin at the Kremlin on 26 November, two days after seeing his US counterpart, Barack Obama, at the White House, to discuss strengthening the countries’ cooperation in the fight against Isis.

The White House press secretary said the Hollande-Obama meeting would “underscore the friendship and solidarity between the United States and France, our oldest ally”.

France formally demanded the help of its EU partners, invoking for the first time ever the mutual assistance article in the EU’s Lisbon treaty, which obliges member states to offer “aid and assistance by all means in their power” in the event of an “armed aggression”.

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The French defence minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, said at a Brussels meeting with his EU counterparts that Europe could help “either by taking part in France’s operations in Syria or Iraq, or by easing the load or providing support for France in other operations”. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said the 28-nation bloc had unanimously agreed to help.

More than 221 of those wounded in Paris are still in hospital, including 57 in intensive care. The French justice minister, Christiane Taubira, said 117 of the 129 dead had been identified.

The French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said police carried out 128 raids on Tuesday morning but gave no further details. Raids on Monday led to 23 arrests and the seizure of weapons including a rocket launcher. Cazeneuve added that 115,000 police, gendarmes and soldiers had been mobilised.

Seven terrorists died in the attacks, six after detonating suicide belts and the other from police gunfire. Police are still hunting Salah Abdeslam, whose brother Brahim blew himself up during the onslaught. A third brother, Mohamed, was detained but later released without charge.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Three men are seen singing the French national anthem on the Place de la République monument. Photograph: Pierre Suu/Getty Images

Advising his brother to “give yourself up”, he told BFMTV: “We are a family, we are thinking of him, wondering where he is, whether he’s frightened, if he’s getting enough food. The best thing would be if he gave himself up so the justice system can throw light on all of this.”

French intelligence officials have said they believe a Syria-based Belgian jihadi, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, 27, was the architect of the attacks. Like the Abdeslam brothers, Abu Oud has lived in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek, long associated with Islamic extremism.

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Officials cited Isis chatter that Abu Oud had advised foreign jihadis that a concert would be an ideal target for inflicting maximum casualties, as well as electronic communications between the suspected ringleader and Brahim Abdeslam.

In further evidence indicating the attacks were organised from Syria, French authorities identified the voice on an Isis video released after the attacks as that of Fabien Clain, a known French extremist in Syria since 2014.

German police arrested two men and a women in Alsdorf, near the western city of Aachen, not far from the Belgian border, but the interior ministry later said they were not “closely connected” to the Paris attacks.

The two suspects detained in Brussels, Mohammed Amri, 27, and Hamza Attou, 21, also come from Molenbeek. After admitting driving to France to pick up Salah Abdeslam early on Saturday, hours after the attacks, they are being held on charges of terrorist murder and conspiracy.

In unconfirmed reports, Belgian media claimed the pair were being investigated as possible suppliers of the suicide bombs used in the attacks, since ammonium nitrate, a fertiliser that can be used to make explosives, was recovered from their homes.

Two safe houses in the Paris area used by the attackers have been found, one reportedly rented by Brahim Abdeslam from 11-17 November in Bobigny, not far from the Stade de France, and the second in Alfortville, just south of Paris, where Salah Abdeslam booked two rooms for the same dates in a short-stay apartment block.

French media said police were analysing syringes, pizza boxes, needles, tubes and mobile phones recovered from the hideouts. A black, Belgian-registered Renault Clio found in the French capital’s 18th arrondissement on Tuesday has also been traced to Salah Abdeslam, French media reported.

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Prosecutors have identified five of the seven attackers who died in the assaults: four Frenchmen and a foreigner who was fingerprinted in Greece last month and later claimed asylum in Serbia. The man was carrying a Syrian passport bearing the name Ahmad Almohammad.

While the passport is almost certainly fake – and so far there is no clue as to the actual identity or nationality of the attacker who used it – the possibility that one of the terrorists may have entered Europe through one of the main refugee trails of the summer has reignited a fierce EU row about border security and how to tackle the continuing arrivals.

Three of the suicide bombers have been named as Omar Ismaïl Mostefai, 29, from Chartres, south-west of Paris, Samy Amimour, 28, a former bus driver from the Paris suburb of Drancy, and Bilal Hadfi, 20, a French national living in Belgium.

All three are thought to have spent time in Syria in the past two years. About 520 French nationals are believed to be in Syria and Iraq, while 250 have returned home.