PARIS, Nov. 19 (UPI) ─ Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the so-called mastermind behind Friday’s deadly bombings in Paris, is dead. He was among those killed during a blazing gun battle north of the city early Wednesday.
French officials announced Thursday morning that Abaaoud was positively identified by his fingerprints. This body was a riddled with bullets, so a visual identification was not possible.
Police said the raids targeted two apartments on the same street, the Rue du Corbillon, and were so intense one floor of one of the residential buildings collapsed.
Several others were arrested, officials said, during the Saint-Denis raids and at other locations Wednesday. Authorities said they conducted the raid because the suspects appeared to be close to launching another terror operation.
Five police officers were injured and a 7-year-old police dog named Diesel was killed in the battle, which saw authorities shoot 5,000 rounds of gunfire that at one point went uninterrupted for about an hour.
The apartment is located near the Place Jean Jaurès, a main square in Saint-Denis not far from the Stade de France — the national stadium targeted by three explosions in last week’s attacks, which killed 129 people and wounded more than 350 others in and around the French capital.
More than 100 heavily armed police and soldiers stormed the third-floor apartment in Saint-Denis just after 4 a.m. local time Wednesday in an effort to find Abaaoud, 27, who also went by the names Abu Omar (Umar) al-Baljiki and Abdel-hamid Abaaoud.
