Five terror suspects were arrested Wednesday morning and two others were killed, including a woman wearing a suicide vest who blew herself up after police launched a raid targeting the alleged mastermind of last Friday's massacre in Paris.
The Paris prosecutor's office said in a statement that three of the five were arrested by SWAT teams in an apartment in the northern suburb of Saint-Denis, while two others were detained nearby. The statement did not identify the arrested suspects or the two who died. As of 9:30 a.m. local time, at least one other person was still holed up in the apartment, more than five hours after the raid began.
Earlier Wednesday, a senior police official told the Associated Press he believed Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a 27-year-old Belgian ISIS militant, was inside the apartment with five other heavily armed people. The official, who was informed routinely about the operation, said scores of police stormed the building and were met with unexpectedly violent resistance.
Another police official told AP that four police officers were injured in the confrontation. The severity of their injuries was not known.
Police vans and fire trucks rushed to the scene north of Paris, just over a mile from the Stade de France stadium, which was targeted by three suicide bombers during Friday's attacks. Riot police cleared people from the streets, pointing guns at curious residents to move them off the roads.
Residents said an initial explosion shook the neighborhood at about 4 a.m. (10 p.m. EST).
"Then there was second big explosion. Then two more explosions. There was an hour of gunfire," said Baptiste Marie, a 26-year-old independent journalist who lives in the neighborhood.
Another witness, Amine Guizani, said he heard the sound of grenades and automatic gunfire.
"They were shooting for an hour. Nonstop. There were grenades. It was going, stopping. Kalashnikovs. Starting again," Guizani said.
Sporadic bangs and explosions continued, and at 7:30 a.m. (1:30 a.m. EST) at least seven explosions shook the center of Saint-Denis. Associated Press reporters at the scene could hear what sounded like grenade blasts from the direction of the standoff.
One local resident posted a 10-second video of the scene on her street near the siege. A series of bangs sounding like automatic weapons fire could be heard. The message accompanying the tweet translates to "It's an intervention by police ... street closed, officers, etc."
Investigators have identified 27-year-old Abaaoud, a Belgian of Moroccan descent, as the chief architect of the attacks that killed 129 and wounded at least 350 others.
Seven attackers died in Friday's gun-and-bomb rampage through Paris. Police had said before the raids that they were hunting for two fugitives suspected of taking part as well as any accomplices. That would bring the number of attackers to at least nine.
French authorities had previously said that at least eight people were directly involved in the bloodshed: seven who died in the attacks and one who got away and slipped across the border to Belgium.
However, there have been gaps in officials' public statements, which have never fully disclosed how many attackers took part in the deadly rampage.
On Tuesday, officials said they now believe at least one other attacker was involved and they were working to identify and track down that suspect. Three officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to provide details about the ongoing investigation.
Surveillance video obtained by the AP also indicated that a team of three attackers carried out the shootings at one of the cafes. The video was among evidence authorities used in concluding that at least one other attacker was at large, the French officials indicated.
The brief clip shows two black-clad gunmen with automatic weapons calmly firing on the bar then returning toward a waiting car, whose driver was maneuvering behind them. Authorities believe the car is the same black SEAT-make vehicle that was found Saturday with three Kalashnikovs inside.
Police have identified one subject of their manhunt as Salah Abdeslam, whom French police accidentally permitted to cross into Belgium on Saturday. One of his brothers, Brahim, blew himself up in Paris.
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