The suspected ringleader of last Friday's terror attacks in Paris was killed in a police raid on Wednesday, the Paris prosecutor said today.
Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian militant, is believed to have coordinated the bombings and shootings that killed 129 people in the French capital on 13 November.
The statement said the 28-year-old was among those killed in a police raid in a suburb of Paris yesterday. During the seige, a woman blew herself up with a suicide belt and a number of people were arrested.
Abaaoud had boasted of mounting attacks in Europe for Islamic State, and had appeared in propaganda videos for the jihadist group. Police originally thought he was in Syria, but their investigations led them to a house in the Paris suburb of St Denis and heavily armed officers stormed the building before dawn, triggering a massive firefight and multiple explosions.
"Abdel Hamid Abaaoud has just been formally identified, after comparing fingerprints, as having been killed during the [police] raid," the statement said.
"It was the body we had discovered in the building, riddled with bullets."
Additional reporting by Reuters
