The man widely known as the suspected mastermind of last Friday's
Paris attacks that killed 129 people, who bragged that he could always
stay one step ahead of Western intelligence, was killed in the police
raid north of Paris Wednesday.
Officials also confirmed that his cousin was killed, when she apparently blew herself up.
Abdelhamid Abaaoud, 27, had been linked to as many as four thwarted
attacks since this spring, including the plot to kill passengers on a
Paris-bound high-speed train in August, a plot that three young
Americans helped foil. He was identified from skin samples after the
Saint-Denis apartment raid, the French prosecutor's office reported.
Later Thursday, police in the eastern French city of Charleville-Mezieres blew open a door to enter a house during a new raid.
French police are looking for anything that could be linked to jihadi
networks or illegal weapons. Police spokeswoman Mathilde Coulon would
not give further details about the Thursday evening raid.
Abaaoud had claimed he successfully moved back and forth from Europe
to Syria coordinating terror attacks, and narrowly escaped a January
police raid in the Belgian city of Verviers. “Allah blinded their vision
and I was able to leave... despite being chased after by so many
intelligence agencies," he told the ISIS magazine Dabiq.
Two counterterrorism sources tell Fox News his death marks a major
advance for the investigation, but add they are operating on the premise
that more senior suspects connected to the plot are still out there.
They describe Abaaoud as the “Mohammed Atta” of the Paris attacks,
the “tactical guy” who identified and pulled together the operatives, in
the same way the lead hijacker kept the 9/11 teams on course.
They emphasize that based on his skill set and experience, Abaaoud
was not the strategic planner, in the same way Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
was for the 9/11 attacks. The Paris massacre involved a plot or plots
with multiple layers and upwards of 20 players, according to the
chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Texas Republican
Michael McCaul.
Police say they launched Wednesday's operation after receiving
information from tapped phone calls, surveillance and tipoffs suggesting
that Abaaoud was holed up in the apartment. Investigators said it was
still unclear how he died. Eight other people were arrested.
French authorities did not know he was in Europe before the massacre,
France's interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Thursday. He demanded
Europe do everything in its power to "vanquish terrorism."
During the raid, according to one police official, an officer
approached Abaaoud's cousin, Hasna Aitboulahcen, and asked her, "Where
is your boyfriend?" She responded angrily: "He's not my boyfriend!" Then
there was an explosion.
The bodies recovered in the raid were badly mangled, with a part of
the woman's spine landing on a police car, complicating formal
identification. Her possible role in the Paris massacre was unclear.
Abaaoud's death may provide some relief not only for Europeans, but
also for his own family. “We are praying that Abdelhamid really is
dead,” his sister, Yasmina, said last year,
The New York Times reported. At the time, there was word he died fighting for ISIS, but it eventually emerged that he escaped Syria for Europe.
His own father, Omar, said the jihadi "dishonored" his family, the Times added.