Massive Police Raid In Paris Suburb Targets Terror Mastermind

Officers hunting suspects involved in the Paris terror attacks exchanged gunfire during an apartment raid in the Saint-Denis suburb early Wednesday. Residents were asked to stay indoors. 

Police said multiple suspects related to the Paris attacks were holed up in the apartment, including Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the alleged mastermind, AFP reports. Salah Abdeslam, whom authorities have been hunting for since Saturday, is also believed to be inside the apartment.

Abaaoud, 28, is a known terrorist who has been on European and Western radars for years. He is a radicalized Belgian and alleged ISIS recruiter who was, until the raid, believed to be in Syria.

Just last month, he was the target of airstrikes against the Islamic State, The New York Times reported.

Salah Abdeslam is the brother Brahim Abdeslam, who died in a suicide attack last Friday at the Boulevard Voltaire. The brothers are from Molenbeek, a poor immigrant neighborhood of Belgium now known to be a hotbed for terrorism.

After the chaos of Friday's attacks, police accidentally let Salah, the most wanted man in Europe, slip from their grasp as he crossed the Belgian border in a car with two other men.

Gunfire began around 4:30 a.m. local time, and was intermittent for at least three hours. The AP counted at least seven explosions heard during the standoff. Three suspects have been arrested, a police source told Reuters.

Two suspects in last week's Paris attacks -- a man and a woman -- also died in the raid, police said. The woman is believed to have blown herself up with a suicide belt. Their identities have not been released.

"There were grenades. It was going, stopping. Kalashnikovs. Starting again," Amin Guizani, a 21-year-old resident, told the AP. 

School in Saint-Denis has been canceled for Wednesday, the mayor, Didier Paillard, announced. Transportation to the northern Paris suburb has also been canceled. 

Stade de France, the national stadium that attackers tried to bomb during a soccer game on Friday, is located in Saint-Denis, just 1.2 miles from the apartment where the raid was focused. 

French police on Tuesday hunted for a second terrorist believed to have escaped after the bomb and gun massacres in Paris, while a U.S. official revealed that the suspected mastermind was part of an Islamic State cell that American intelligence agencies had been tracking for months.

Meanwhile, France and Russia unleashed a new wave of airstrikes against ISIS targets in Syria, while fears of further terror attacks deepened in Paris and beyond.

The Eiffel Tower closed to the public just a day after it had reopened and a soccer match between Germany and the Netherlands was canceled due to a bomb threat just 90 minutes before kickoff. 

Earlier on Wednesday, two Paris-bound Air France flights from the U.S. were diverted due to anonymous telephone bomb threats. A flight from Washington, D.C., made an emergency landing in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and a flight from Los Angeles diverted to Salt Lake City. Passengers deplaned safely. 

Islamic State militants have claimed responsibility for the Friday the 13th attacks that targeted France's national soccer stadium, a packed concert hall and popular restaurants and cafes in one of Paris' trendiest neighborhoods.

French authorities had previously said that at least eight people were directly involved in the bloodshed Friday: 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.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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