Paris attacks 'mastermind' killed in morning raid: Report

Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the 28-year-old man suspected of masterminding last week's attacks in Paris, was killed during a raid of a north Paris flat on Wednesday, two senior European intelligence officials reportedly told the Washington Post.

If confirmed, Abaaoud would be one of at least two people killed, including a woman who blew herself up when police stormed the apartment on the hunt for him on Wednesday.

Late on Wednesday, French prosecutor Francois Molins told reporters that at least two bodies found after the raid had not yet been identified and said the precise number of dead was unknown. Abaaoud, however, was not among those arrested, Molins said. He also said that the body that had sustained a number of gunshots was "not in a state that allows it to be identified". 

The suspected mastermind of the Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was not among a number of people arrested in a huge police raid on Wednesday, the city's prosecutor said.

Explosions and gunfire were heard as heavily armed officers assaulted the flat in the suburb of Saint-Denis at about 4:30 am local time on Wednesday, leading to one woman inside detonating an explosive vest and another occupant being killed by a grenade. 

Prosecutor Molins said the operation was aimed at Abaaoud, a Belgian who has been active with the Islamic State group in Syria. Until this morning, Abaaoud was believed to have been in Raqqa.

The raid turned into an seven-hour standoff with up to four people inside the flat, but was declared over at about 11:30 am local time with the arrest of a total of seven people.

Police did not release the identities of those arrested but the French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said they included three inside the apartment, two others found hiding under rubble, the landlord and his "friend".

Five police were wounded in the operation on the crossroads of Rue de la Republique and Rue Corbillon.

Nabil Gerram, 36, who lives near the Basilica of St-Denis, was quoted as saying: "I was woken with a start at 4:20 am by the sound of extremely heavy gunfire. My children were crying. There was non-stop fire for 20-25 mins, then calm, then it started up again for a very long time."

Several loud explosions were heard during the morning. A local resident who identified herself as Alexia told AFP on Wednesday that she heard "'booms like grenades and then intermittent bursts of gunfire" during the raid.

Reda, a taxi driver, said: "I heard bursts of machine gun fire. I got out (of the car), masked policemen stopped us and told us to leave."

Shortly before being led away by police, the landlord told the AFP news agency that he had lent the flat to two people from Belgium as a "favour".

"A friend asked me to put up two of his friends for a few days," he said. "I said that there was no mattress, they told me 'it's not a problem', they just wanted water and to pray."

He said his friend told him the men came from Belgium, where several of the Paris attackers were known to have lived.

"I was asked to do a favour, I did a favour. I didn't know they were terrorists," he said, before being led away by police.

A woman also arrested told AFP she had slept in the flat last week and the dwelling was "a kind of squat".

Police rained more than 5,000 rounds of ammunition on the building after terrified residents living in the area near the Stade de France stadium were evacuated.

Saint-Denis is home to the Stade de France, which was one of several places hit by gunmen and suicide bombers on Friday in attacks claimed by IS that killed 129 people and injured more than 350.

Ninth man suspected in Paris attacks

The raid came as Europe was placed on high alert after footage from the scene of one of Friday's attacks revealed a ninth suspect may have taken part.

It was not clear if this ninth man was one of two suspected accomplices arrested in Belgium or was on the run, potentially with 26-year-old fugitive Frenchman Salah Abdeslam.

In Belgium, where some of the attackers lived, it emerged prosecutors had questioned the two Abdeslam brothers before the attacks "but they had shown no signs of being a potential threat".

Hundreds of Belgians joined a candlelight vigil in solidarity with the victims of the Paris attacks on Wednesday in Molenbeek, the troubled Brussels neighbourhood where the brothers lived.

Police also carried out raids in southwestern France, in Ariege, Toulouse and the department of the Haute-Garonne.

The operations were part of an anti-terrorism strategy and not the probe into the Paris attacks, an investigator told AFP.

French President Francois Hollande on Wednesday was scheduled to hold a meeting to discuss proposals to extend by three months the state of emergency declared after the worst attacks in French history. Politicians will vote on the measure on Thursday and Friday.

Meanwhile, the body representing Muslims in France said it would ask all 2,500 mosques in the country to condemn "all forms of violence or terrorism" at Friday prayers.

In Germany, a football match in Hanover between Germany and the Netherlands was cancelled on Tuesday evening and the crowd sent home after police acted on a "serious" bomb threat.

As police stepped up the hunt for the Paris fugitives, French and Russian jets pounded IS targets in the group's Syrian stronghold of Raqqa for a third consecutive day.

A monitoring group said the air strikes had killed at least 33 people in the last 72 hours.