FRANCE STRIKES MAJOR ISIS TARGETS IN SYRIA IN RETALIATION FOR ATTACKS

President François Hollande of France in Paris on Saturday. Attackers at a rock concert reportedly mentioned him by name. Credit Ian Langsdon/European Pressphoto Agency

Warplanes Focus on City of Raqqa

France launched the assault after President François Hollande held a meeting Saturday with senior security officials. The French government announced it hit up to 30 targets in Raqqa, the militant group's de facto capital. The operation, carried out in coordination with U.S. forces, struck a command centre, recruitment centre for jihadists, a munitions depot and a training camp for fighters.

This terrorist was identified as Bilal Hadfi, 20, who had spent time fighting with ISIS in Syria before returning to Europe and detonating his suicide vest at the Stade de France

Authorities Focus on 3 French Brothers

The Paris terrorist attacks were carried out with the help of three French brothers living in Belgium, the authorities said on Sunday.

The French authorities said they were seeking Abdeslam Salah, 26, and described him as dangerous. The police warned the public: “Do not intervene on your own, under any circumstances.” Belgian officials said that his brother Ibrahim had died in the three-hour massacre and that another brother, Mohamed, had been detained Saturday in the Molenbeek area of Brussels.

The carefully coordinated attacks on Friday night, believed to be the work of the Islamic State, increasingly appear to have involved extensive planning by a network of men with sophisticated weapons who plotted the attack from outside the country.

The Salah brothers lived in Molenbeek, an impoverished section of Brussels that is mostly populated by immigrants from the Arab world and that has been linked to violence. “We don’t have control of the situation in Molenbeek at present,” Mr. Jambon told VRT, a television channel.



Paris Bloodshed May Be the Latest of Many ISIS Attacks Around the World.

The Islamic State has been expanding beyond its base in Iraq and Syria since it declared a caliphate, or Islamic state, in June 2014. The group is focused on three parallel tracks, according to Harleen Gambhir, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War:

Inciting regional conflict with attacks in Iraq and Syria;

Building relationships with jihadist groups that can carry out military operations across the Middle East and North Africa;
and inspiring, and sometimes helping, ISIS sympathizers to conduct attacks in the West.

“The goal,” Ms. Gambhir said, “is that through these regional affiliates and through efforts to create chaos in the wider world, the organization will be able to expand, and perhaps incite a global apocalyptic war.”

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:

DAILY MAIL

On Saturday morning, ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks across Paris, saying 'eight brothers wearing explosive belts and carrying assault rifles' conducted a 'blessed attack on... Crusader France'.

On Saturday afternoon, three people travelling in a grey VW Polo were arrested at the French/Belgian border when police traced the car after it was sighted outside the Bataclan theatre at the time of the attacks. 

One of the Stade de France suspects was found carrying a Syrian passport under the name Ahmed Almuhamed who travelled to France as a migrant through Greece on October 3. Ferry tickets reveal he travelled with another man named as Mohammed Almuhamed.
However, the French minister of justice Christiane Taubira said on Sunday that the passport under the name Ahmed Almuhamed was a fake. 

Omar Ismaël Mostefai, 29, from Courcouronnes, Paris was also named as a Bataclan suicide bomber. The petty criminal and father-of-one was known to police as a radical and had travelled to Algeria and Syria. He was identified by the fingerprint on a severed digit found after he detonated his suicide belt. 
Mostefai is believed to have been radicalised by a Belgian hate preacher of Moroccan descent claimed to have regularly preached at his mosque in South West France. His father, a brother and other family members have been held and are being questioned. 
The black Seat Leon used by the terrorists who murdered diners outside the Casa Nostra pizza restaurant and the La Belle Équipe cafe was found abandoned 20 minutes away in Montreuil with a cache of weapons inside. 

Seven people were detained in Belgium linked to the atrocities - three at the border and four in Brussels. Five are from the Molenbeek area of Brussels known as a 'den of terrorists'.

Iraqi spies warned the West of an ISIS suicide bomber threat the day before the Paris atrocities, it was revealed on Sunday, as more details of major intelligence failures began to emerge. The US-led coalition in Syria was apparently told by Iraqi security sources that 24 extremists were involved in the terror operation planned in the ISIS capital Raqqa and it would involve 19 attackers including five others including bombmakers and planners. No detail was given of when or where an attack might take place.
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From as far back as August, France's authorities possessed information that militants were said to be planning attacks on French concert halls after a tip-off was received from a 30-year-old man who was detained on his way back from Syria.

On Sunday night there were 42 people still said to be in intensive care in hospital following Friday's terrorist attacks. 

French police are still hunting for three gunmen on the run, including Brussels-born Frenchman Salah Abdeslam, and an ISIS bombmaker likely to have made the suicide vests.
An international arrest warrant has been issued for Abdeslam, 26, who is accused of renting a Volkswagen Polo used by the suicide bombers. He is one of three brothers believed to be at the heart of the eight-strong ISIS cell. 

It emerged on Sunday night that police found Abdeslam near the Belgian border early Saturday but let him go after he showed them his ID card. Officers pulled over the car being driven by Abdelslam on Saturday morning on the A2 motorway between Paris and Brussels. Two other men were also in the Seat car. At the time, officers in Paris knew that Abdeslam had rented the car used by the killers which had been abandoned near the theatre but the information had not been transmitted to those responsible for conducting the border checks.

His brother Ibrahim, 31, blew himself up in a solo attack outside cafe Comptoir Voltaire after renting a black Seat found abandoned today filled with AK-47s and ammunition. A third sibling, named as Mohamed Abdeslam, has been arrested in the Belgian capital. 

On Sunday evening the French defence ministry announced that the country's warplanes had bombed Islamic State's stronghold in Syria's Raqa, destroying a command post and a training camp, the defence ministry said. Ten fighter jets were involved, dropping 20 bombs

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3318765/Paris-terror-suspects-arrested-Brussels-car-given-fine.html#ixzz3rdGVCzGy 

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Undercover plain-clothed officers are seen with weapons and handcuffs on their jeans as they detain a suspect in Belgium

There have now been a string of arrests in connection with the terror attacks across central Paris locations on Friday. The arrests so far include:

Saturday afternoon: Three people are arrested at the French/Belgian border after police trace their car after it was sighted in Paris at the time of the attacks.

Saturday evening: Police arrest seven people in the St Jans Molenbeek district of Brussels after a discarded parking ticket found in the VW Polo seen outside the Bataclan theatre led police there. It is confirmed two of the attackers live in Brussels, with one from the Molenbeek area.

Saturday night: Suicide bomber Omar Ismail Mostefai, 29, is identified by his finger, which was found among the carnage at the Bataclan concert hall, and confirmed as one of the terrorists responsible. He killed himself in the attack but six of his family members, including his father, 34-year-old brother and sister-in-law, are arrested in France and their homes searched.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3318765/Paris-terror-suspects-arrested-Brussels-car-given-fine.html#ixzz3rdHM8XOQ 

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PARIS ATTACK WAS WORK OF 3 TEAMS, AN ‘ACT OF WAR’ BY ISIS, FRANCE SAYS

The ‘act of war’ that left 129 dead in Paris was the work of three teams with one objective: To kill as many as possible, authorities said. 

THE GUARDIAN

Three coordinated teams of jihadi gunmen struck at six different sites across Paris in a bloody wave of suicide bombings and shootings that left 129 people dead, the Paris public prosecutor has said.


François Molins told a news conference on Saturday that at least 352 more were injured – including 90 critically – in the attacks on Friday night on the Stade de France, a city-centre concert hall and a series of packed cafes and bars.

Molins said three French nationals had been arrested in Belgium, where they all lived, in connection with the attacks.




As police worked to identify the seven militants, all of whom died in the attacks, Molins also confirmed that at least one of the fighters, identified by his fingerprints, was a French national from the Paris suburb of Courcouronnes. The man, born in 1985, had a criminal record and had been flagged as an extremist as early as 2010, the prosecutor said.

Relatives of one of the attackers, a Frenchman born in the Paris suburbs, were later arrested on Saturday, according to French authorities who said that searches were underway.

Molins also said earlier that a Syrian passport, belonging to a man born in 1990 who was not known to the French authorities, had been found lying close by the bodies of two other jihadis, who both blew themselves up in the course of their attacks.


Greece’s citizen protection minister, Nikos Toskas, said earlier that the passport’s owner had entered the European Union through the Greek island of Leros on 3 October, adding: “We do not know if the passport was checked by other countries through which the holder likely passed.”
A government official in Athens told the Guardian: “We found the serial number and we found the finger prints and palm prints that are also taken [from every refugee].” But he warned against “automatically concluding” that the passport holder was the assailant.

“It is now up to the French authorities to match those finger prints with the remains of the body of the attacker, and announce the identity,” the official said. “Either this person passed through Greece posing as a refugee, or along the way he bought or stole the passport. At this stage either scenario is possible.”


Greek government sources were later quoted by Reuters as saying that a second man suspected of being among the attackers was likely to have passed through Greece. However, a senior Greek government source later told the Guardian there was no indication “whatsoever” that this was the case.

Isis said it had dispatched eight jihadi – leaving open the possibility that one may still be on the run – wearing suicide bomb belts and carrying machine guns, across the French capital on Friday night in a “blessed attack on ... crusader France”.

Belgian police made at least one arrest today in the Brussels neighbourhood of Molenbeek 

The coordinated assault seems to mark new chapter in terrorism.


The complex attacks, which the Islamic State said it carried out, would mark the first major operation for the militant group outside the Middle East, prompting the rest of Europe to bolster security at borders and transit points.

A statement released by the extremist group said it masterminded the horrifying attacks on the French capital in revenge for 'insulting' the prophet Muhammad and bombing ISIS in Iraq and Syria.The complexity of last night's terror attacks suggest they were planned months in advance.

Caught between internal, external terror threats, France struggles to cope

Last night's co-ordinated and widespread series of atrocities was on a whole new scale of indiscriminate horror. ISIS had struck at the heart of everything Parisians love most: a concert hall, a football stadium, bars and cafés. It was an assault on the very fabric of French, and Western, society - designed to kill as many human beings as possible, whoever they were. President Francois Hollande branded attacks an 'act of war' and vowed to 'mercilessly' retaliate against the extremists.

Attacks May Prompt More Aggressive U.S. Strategy on 

ISIS

As lethal attacks against Russia, Lebanon and France prove the global reach of ISIS, the United States will likely reassess the threat it pose.

PARIS TERROR ATTACKS KILL OVER 100; FRANCE DECLARES EMERGENCY STATE

Shootings and Blasts, Apparently in Sync

The Paris area reeled Friday night from a shooting rampage, explosions and mass hostage-taking. 

Ambulances screamed down the boulevards, as the French capital was left to wonder: Why us? Once again?

‘Scene of Carnage’ Inside Sold-Out Paris Concert Hall

People attending a show by an American group described the moment when men burst into the Bataclan concert hall.

The French government imposed border controls, decreed new security powers and mobilized troops in a national emergency. President François Hollande of France ... called the terrorist attacks on Friday an “act of war,” saying that the Islamic State was responsible for the attacks and that the death toll now stands at 127.

Mr. Hollande declared three days of mourning.

Taken together, the assaults represented the deadliest day of attacks in France since World War II and one of the worst terrorist strikes on Western soil since Sept. 11, 2001. At half a dozen sites across Paris — a soccer stadium, restaurants, a concert hall — the attackers carried out suicide bombings, hurled grenades and shot hostages dead in a frenzy of violence that paralyzed the city. Late into the night and early Saturday morning, heavily armed security forces flooded the streets while panicked residents and tourists sought safety indoors.

The latest violence will only heighten the tension on a continent that is already on edge from the accumulated strain of a historic migration crisis, growing Islamist extremism and increasingly polarized politics.




World leaders rushed to condemn the attacks, and French President François Hollande vowed revenge, though there was no immediate claim of responsibility. “We are going to lead a war which will be pitiless,” Hollande said outside the Bataclan concert hall, scene of the most bloodshed.

“Because when terrorists are capable of committing such atrocities, they must be certain that they are facing a determined France, a united France, a France that is together and does not let itself be moved, even if today we express infinite sorrow.”

President Barack Obama condemned the series of deadly attacks across Paris Friday as an 'attack on all of humanity' and pledged to work with France to bring those responsible to justice.

Chilling footage shows concert-goers dragging blood-soaked friends from scene and woman hanging from window. Up to 100 were massacred in the Bataclan concert hall after suicide bombers took hostage then blew themselves up.  Eyewitnesses said the terrorists shouted 'Allah Akbar' and 'this is for Syria' as they burst in and opened fire,

The violence was quickly celebrated online by backers of the Islamic State and other extremist groups. The scale and sophistication of the attacks will be likely to prompt questions about how the planning for such an operation evaded the scrutiny of French intelligence services.

Until the early hours of Saturday morning, some of the gunmen were thought to remain at large. But the Paris prosecutor’s office announced Saturday that all eight of the attackers had been killed — seven of them by detonating explosives.

Still, authorities warned that accomplices could remain at large. "To plan six attacks you need a lot of people involved, not only those who were at the spot," said a senior European counter-terrorism official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The killers traced an arc across the city, targeting lightly secured facilities where tourists and residents had been enjoying the sort of experiences and events that define Friday night in Paris on a cool November evening. Soccer games, concerts and evening meals were all violently disrupted by the sounds of explosions and gunfire.