French officials have confirmed a police raid Wednesday resulted in the death of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who is the suspected mastermind behind the Paris attacks last Friday.
After receiving intelligence on Abaaoud’s whereabouts, police conducted a seven-hour-long raid on an apartment building in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis in France. This suburb is home to a large immigrant population. In total, the SWAT teams fired 5,000 rounds, resulting in two dead, The Wall Street Journal reports. Helicopters flew overhead. Drones and robots conducted surveillance. Sharpshooters were posted on buildings.
Abaaoud, 28, was one of the two terrorists killed in the firefight. He is suspected of coordinating the Paris attacks, which led to 129 deaths.
Identifying his remains was somewhat difficult because as police entered the building, a woman strapped with explosives blew herself up, causing the ceiling to collapse and hit Abaaoud. The apartment was part of a three safe house network in Paris for militants to carry out operations.
“The brain or one of the brains—we have to be extremely careful—was found among the dead,” French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Police checked Abaaoud’s fingerprints to confirm his identity.
French investigators are starting to find out that the Belgian-born Abaaoud transited from Syria to Brussels fairly fluidly. In Syria, Abaaoud worked as a military commander, and he was in the region earlier this year. It is likely he came back to Europe by disguising himself in the flood of refugees coming through Greece.
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