He is investigators’ ‘best bet’, officials tell French media, as arrests made in raids across the country

French intelligence officials have named the alleged mastermind of a deadly string of suicide bombings and shootings in Paris as the Belgian extremist Abdelhamid Abaaoud, after French police made more than 20 arrests and seized arms and ammunition in a series of anti-terror raids across the country.

Paris terror attacks: Abdelhamid Abaaoud 'identified as alleged mastermind' – live Read more

As details emerged of an elaborate international terror operation run from Syria and carried out by a sleeper cell based in Belgium, officials told French media that Abaaoud, seen as one of Islamic State’s most active operatives, was “investigators’ best bet” as the main organiser of the attacks, which killed 129 people on Friday.



Abaaoud has spent time in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek, a hotbed of Islamic extremism and home to several members of the militant cell that carried out Friday’s attacks on the Stade de France, the Bataclan concert hall and a string of crowded bars and restaurants. He is suspected of involvement in a narrowly averted attack on a Thalys high-speed Amsterdam-Brussels train in August.

He is also said to have carried out several armed robberies with one of the men alleged to have been involved in the attacks, the worst in France since the second world war. A French jihadi arrested last summer after returning from Syria reportedly told police that Abaaoud had instructed him to attack a concert hall.

The development came as the French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said police had searched 168 addresses in dawn raids across France, taking 23 people into custody and placing 104 more under house arrest.



“It’s just a start, these operations are going to continue,” Cazeneuve said. “The response of the Republic will be huge and total. He who targets the Republic will find the Republic will catch him, will be implacable.”

Suspected Paris attacks mastermind Abdelhamid Abaaoud – what we know Read more

Prosecutors said five of the seven suicide bombers who died on Friday had now been identified. Four were French, and the fifth possibly Syrian. One of three attackers who blew themselves up at the Bataclan, where 89 people died, was identified on Monday as Samy Amimour, 28, from the Paris suburb of Drancy, who was the subject of an international arrest warrant.

Another, who detonated his explosive vest outside the Stade de France stadium, was carrying a Syrian passport in the name of Ahmad Almohammad, aged 25, from Idlib. His fingerprints matched those of someone who transited the Greek island of Leros in October, prosecutors said, claiming asylum in Serbia four days later.

Omar Ismaïl Mostefai, 29, from Chartres, south-west of Paris, was the first killer to be officially identified, from a severed finger found inside the Bataclan. Sources close to the investigation named two other French assailants as Bilal Hadfi and Brahim Abdeslam.

French media said all the attackers so far identified were known to have spent time in Syria. The latest official figures estimate that 520 French nationals are currently in the Syrian and Iraqi war zones, including 116 women. About 137 have died there, some 250 have returned home, and around 700 are suspected of having plans to join Islamic State.

As a shocked nation returned to work after the attacks, President François Hollande joined a crowd of students from the Sorbonne university in Paris at midday for a sombre minute of silence observed by thousands at similar gatherings around the country.

Much of the country came to halt, metro trains in Paris stopped, and large crowds gathered in central Paris, including at the Place de la République close to where several of the shootings took place. Schoolchildren and office workers paused to stand at their desks, while MPs sang the national anthem La Marseillaise.

Paris hospitals reported that they had treated 415 people who were injured or traumatised by the assaults, Europe’s deadliest since the 2004 Madrid train bombings. More than 40 remained in a critical condition.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A minute’s silence is observed across Paris and the rest of the world.

Hollande, who called the attacks “an act of war” that must be countered “mercilessly”, is due to make a historic address at Versailles to the combined houses of the French parliament later on Monday.

The raids were mostly described as “preventative” anti-terroroperations under the nationwide state of emergency declared in France since the attacks. In Lyon, police seized a “war arsenal” of weapons including a rocket launcher, pistols and a Kalashnikov.

Further raids took place in Toulouse, Grenoble, Jeumont – near the border with Belgium – Strasbourg, Marseille and the Lille suburb of Roubaix, as well as in the north-east Paris suburb of Bobigny – the only operation “directly linked” to Friday’s attacks, police said.

The prime minister, Manuel Valls, said there was a real risk of more terror attacks to come. “We know that operations were being prepared, and are still being prepared, not only against France but other European countries too,” Valls said. “France will live with the threat of new attacks for a long time to come.”

The raids followed France’s biggest airstrike on Syria to date on Sunday night, targeting Isis’s de facto capital, Raqqa, after the group’s claim of responsibility for the Paris carnage in retaliation for earlier French attacks on its forces in Syria and Iraq. Islamic State warned in a video on Monday that any country that struck at its forces would suffer the same fate as France, promising specifically to target Washington.

Twelve French warplanes including 10 fighter jets were launched from the United Arab Emirates and Jordan and 20 bombs dropped on a command centre, a recruitment centre for jihadis, a munitions depot, and a training camp for fighters, the defence ministry said. Activists in Raqqa said the strikes did appear to have killed any civilians.

Cazeneuve said the strikes were a direct retaliation for the Paris attacks, which he said were organised from within Syria aided by a cell in Belgium. “We are facing a new reality, one of acts of war organised by barbarians from inside Syria,” Cazeneuve said.

Paris attack suspects: what do we know about them? Read more

Amid mounting claims of intelligence failings in France and Belgium, a senior Turkish official said authorities had twice flagged Mostefai to their French counterparts, but were only asked for information about him after the Paris attacks. Mostefai was first named as a possible “terror suspect” in October 2014, the official said.

It emerged on Sunday that Iraqi intelligence, too, had warned French intelligence agencies the day before the Paris onslaught of imminent “bombings or assassinations or hostage-taking in the coming days”.

French security officials said such warnings were frequent, but Iraqi intelligence operatives said they had warned France of specific details, including that the attackers were trained for this operation and had been sent from Raqqa to France, where they were to meet a sleeper cell to help carry out the plan.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The French police wanted notice for Salah Abdeslam. Photograph: DSK/AFP/Getty Images

The investigation into the Paris attacks quickly led to Belgium after police discovered that two cars used by the militants had been rented in the Brussels area. A massive manhunt is continuing for Salah Abdeslam, a 26-year-old Frenchman based in the Belgian capital.

Abdeslam, who rented a Volkswagen Polo parked outside the Bataclan where 89 people died, was pulled up alongside two other men for a routine check near the French-Belgian border hours after the attacks. But the men were released because none of their names were on wanted list.



Salah’s brother Brahim Abdeslam, 31, blew himself up outside the concert hall. A third Abdeslam brother, Mohamed, was one of five suspects arrested in Molenbeek over the weekend who have now been released without charge.

Two others detained in raids have been changed with being part of a terror group and links to a terror attack, the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office said.

The revelation that one of the attackers may have entered Europe with refugees through Greece triggered renewed arguments within the EU on how to handle the hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrant, with Polish and Slovak officials demanding an end to a plan to relocate asylum seekers across the bloc.

France urged its European partners to move swiftly to improve intelligence sharing, fight arms trafficking and terror financing, and strengthen border security as a result of the attacks.



“Clearly, decisions must be taken,” the secretary of state for European affairs, Harlem Désir, said ahead of talks with European Union foreign ministers. “France was attacked, but all of Europe was hit. We were hit together, and we will respond together.”