Chief suspect in Paris attacks died in raid, France says

Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the Belgian militant suspected of having orchestrated the Paris terrorist attacks was killed in a police raid in the northern Paris suburb of St-Denis early Wednesday, the French authorities announced on Thursday.

The death of the plot's alleged ringleader ended one chapter of the intense criminal investigation that began on Friday night, when three teams of terrorists, in a series of closely coordinated raids, killed 129 people.

But many questions remained unanswered: how Abbaoud planned and organised the attacks; whether the Islamic State is planning additional attacks outside of its stronghold in Syria and Iraq; and the identities of several of the attackers.

Also on Thursday, the Belgian police conducted their own sweep in Brussels on Thursday. (GLOBAL TERRORISM INDEX 2015)

Seven raids are being conducted in Brussels in relation to Bilal Hadfi, one of the dead Paris attackers, a spokesman for the Belgian federal prosecutor said, adding that the houses of Hadfi's friends and relatives were being searched. One person has been detained for questioning.

The latest search for suspects came as the French prime minister, Manuel Valls, said an attack using "chemical or biological weapons" in France could not be ruled out, and the Belgian prime minister, Charles Michel, asked Parliament to approve a variety of strict new security measures.

Separately, the White House said President Obama would not abandon plans to attend climate change talks in Paris at the end of the month despite security concerns in the city. The Paris prefecture has extended a ban on protests in the Paris area until Sunday.

At least some of the Belgian raids were being conducted in Molenbeek, the Brussels district that has emerged as a crucial link in the investigation of the attacks.

Molenbeek was the base for Abaaoud, the Belgian who is believed to have organised the attacks, and two Abdeslam brothers: Salah, who is still at large, and Ibrahim, who died after he detonated a suicide bomb at a cafe on Friday.

Abaaoud was the focus of a raid on Wednesday in St-Denis, a suburb on the northern edge of Paris, that ended with eight people in custody.

Valls, in a speech at the French National Assembly, where lawmakers were debating a three-month extension of a state of emergency, warned that "we must not rule anything out" when considering the possibility that terrorists might use chemical weapons, although he did not provide any evidence to suggest that such an attack was in the works.

Valls also called for reinforced tracking of movements of people within the European Union and urged European countries to improve the sharing of airline passenger information.

"France has been attacked," Valls said in justifying the need to extend the state of emergency. "French people are under shock. They are expecting from all of us some strong, quick and effective reactions."

Among some long-term measures, Valls announced the creation of a "structure for radicalised youths" that would accommodate those who say they have abandoned extremist views. Admission to the program would be contingent on a judicial review, Valls said, and jihadists returning from Iraq or Syria would not be allowed.

"Their place is in prison," he said.

On Wednesday, President François Hollande announced at a gathering of French mayors that local police forces that requested them would be provided with weapons and bulletproof jackets, taken from the stocks of the national police.

The National Assembly, France's lower house of Parliament, later approved a three-month extension of the state of emergency that Hollande declared after the attacks. The three-month period would begin on November 26th; France's upper house of Parliament, the Senate, will consider the extension and vote on Friday.

©2015 The New York Times News Service