France confirms suspected mastermind of Paris attacks killed in raid

An undated photograph of a man described as Abdelhamid Abaaoud that was published in the Islamic State’s online magazine Dabiq and posted on a social media website. REUTERS/Social Media Website via Reuters TV

The suspected mastermind of last week’s Paris attacks was killed in the police raid of an apartment north of the capital, French officials said on Thursday.

Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a 28-year-old Belgian militant who had boasted of mounting attacks in Europe for the Islamic State, was accused of orchestrating last Friday’s coordinated bombings and shootings in the French capital, which killed 129 people.

“It was his body we discovered in the building, riddled with bullets,” a statement from the Paris prosecutor said, a day after the pre-dawn raid. The prosecutor later added that it was unclear whether Abaaoud had detonated a suicide belt.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls broke the news in Parliament to applause from lawmakers who were voting on Thursday to extend the country’s state of emergency for another three months.

“We know today … that the mastermind of the attacks – or one of them, let’s remain cautious – was among those dead,” Valls told reporters. Confirmation that Abaaoud was in Paris will focus more attention on European security services, who ahead of Friday’s attacks had thought he was still in Syria.

“This is a major failing,” said Roland Jaquard at the International Observatory for Terrorism.

Early on Wednesday morning, investigations led police to the house where Abaaoud was holed up in the Paris suburb of St. Denis. Heavily armed officers stormed the building before dawn, triggering a massive firefight and multiple explosions.

Officials had said on Wednesday that two people were killed in the raid, including a female suicide bomber who blew herself up. Forensic scientists were trying to determine whether a third person had died. Eight people were arrested.

Two police sources and a source close to the investigation told Reuters the St. Denis cell had been planning a fresh attack on Paris’s La Defense business district. A source close to the investigation said the female bomber who was killed might have been Abaaoud’s cousin.

Investigators believe the attacks – the deadliest in France since World War Two – were set in motion in Syria, with Islamist cells in neighboring Belgium organizing the mayhem.

The victims came from 17 different countries, many of them young people out enjoying themselves at bars, restaurants, a concert hall and a soccer stadium near where Wednesday’s police raid took place.

Islamic State, which controls swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq, has claimed responsibility, saying the attacks were in retaliation for French air raids against their positions over the past year.

France has called for a global coalition to defeat the extremists and has launched air strikes on Raqqa, the de-facto Islamic State capital in northern Syria, since the weekend. Russia has also targeted the city in retribution for the downing of a Russian airliner last month that killed 224.

The Russian air force on Wednesday carried out a “mass strike” on Islamic State positions around Syria, including Raqqa, Russian news agencies reported.

INTERNATIONAL COORDINATION

Paris and Moscow are not coordinating their air strikes in Syria, but French President Francois Hollande is due to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Nov. 26 to discuss how their countries’ militaries might work together.

Two days before that, Hollande will meet in Washington with U.S. President Barack Obama to discuss the role of a U.S.-led coalition in any unified effort against Islamic State.

France is one of several European countries participating in the U.S.-led coalition’s strikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq, and two months ago became the only European country to join strikes in Syria as well.

Obama on Thursday reiterated the U.S. position that eradicating the group was tied up with ending the civil war in Syria, which could not happen as long as President Bashar al-Assad was in power.

“Bottom line is, I do not foresee a situation in which we can end the civil war in Syria while Assad remains in power,” he told reporters in Manila on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.

(Reporting and writing by Crispian Balmer, Andrew Callus and Ingrid Melander; Editing by John Irish and Peter Graff)

Source: UNTV

Attack, Explosion At Gas Factory In Southeastern France Leaves 1 Decapitated, Several Wounded

SAINT-QUENTIN-FALLAVIER, France (AP) -- A truck driver once under surveillance for radical Islamic ties crashed into an American-owned chemical warehouse in southeastern France on Friday and hung his employer's severed head on a factory gate, along with banners with Arabic inscriptions.

The attack, which triggered an explosion that wounded two people, came on a day of violence that spanned three continents.

The suspect, who was apprehended soon after setting off the blast, is the latest French citizen implicated in extremist bloodshed in recent years after being flagged to authorities, then falling off the radar. Police were put on higher alert in the Lyon area after the assault, which revived fearful memories of attacks in January on a kosher market and satirical newspaper that left 20 dead.

"Islamist terrorism has again struck France," Prime Minister Manuel Valls said.

The attack in France came on the same day that a gunman mowed down scores of European tourists on a beach in Tunisia and a suicide bomber killed more than two dozen worshippers at a Shiite mosque in Kuwait - violence that followed a call by Islamic State extremists to target "nonbelievers."

Anti-terrorist police to investigate southeast France attack - prosecutor : http://t.co/Y6f803Jkd7 pic.twitter.com/3Eq9Zuw8ze

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) June 26, 2015

 No group immediately claimed responsibility for the factory attack in France. The severed head appeared to mimic the Islamic State group's practice of beheading prisoners and displaying their heads for all to see, and came days after the militants urged attacks during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The bloodshed was condemned by the United Nations, the United States, Israel and others.

The French attack began about 9:30 a.m., when Yassine Salhi drove a utility truck to the gate of the Air Products factory in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier, southeast of Lyon, authorities said.

Prosecutor Francois Molins said Salhi was known to factory staff because he regularly made deliveries there, and they let him in the gate. Once beyond the sight of security cameras, Salhi plowed his truck into gas canisters in a factory warehouse, touching off an explosion, Molins said.

A knife and the decapitated body of Salhi's employer were found at the site of the explosion, and the severed head was posted on a gate at the factory entrance with two flags bearing proclamations of Islamic faith, the prosecutor said.

A photo taken on June 26, 2015 shows the Air Products gas factory in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier, near Lyon, central eastern France, after a suspected Islamist assault in which a decapitated head was pinned to the gates. (JEAN-PHILIPPE KSIAZEK/AFP/Getty Images)

Firefighters apprehended Salhi, and he was in custody Friday night along with his wife, sister and another person, while police sweeps of the vehicle and the suspect's apartment were continuing, the prosecutor said.

Authorities described Salhi as a father of three who was married for more than 10 years, and who had been monitored for links to radical Islam from 2006-2008. "He continued to attract the attention of intelligence services from time to time from 2011 to 2014 for his links to the Salafist movement in the Lyon region," Molins said.

He is the latest Frenchman to have been on authorities' radar before staging attacks in recent years. Others include Mohamed Merah, who attacked a Jewish school in 2012, Mehdi Nemmouche, chief suspect in a 2014 attack on Brussels Jewish Museum, and two of the gunmen in the January shootings in Paris.

"We are dealing with `sleeper' terrorists who are able to disappear from the surveillance radar for years and then reappear," Parliament member Georges Fenech, on a commission for surveillance of jihadist networks, told reporters near the factory.

"It's really important to reflect and act to make sure that this surveillance lasts as long as possible. If not, we can have perpetrators of attacks who have been located, but who disappear off all surveillance."

President Francois Hollande raised the security alert for the southeastern region to its highest level for the next three days. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said security was tightened at religious sites around the country.

Investigating police officers work outside the plant where an attack took place, Friday, June 26, 2015 in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier, southeast of Lyon, France. (AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani)

Three French officials said the man who was decapitated ran a local transportation company that employed Salhi. The victim's name was not released. One official said the businessman was believed to have been killed before the attack on the factory. The officials were not authorized to speak to the media and requested anonymity

Hollande said the key question was determining whether there were any accomplices.

Others, including Salhi's wife, were seen on television being taken into custody from his apartment building in the Lyon suburb of Saint Priest hours after the attack.

The Paris Mosque condemned the attack, and a Muslim forklift operator who lives next to the factory described his horror and fear of reprisals.

"Doing this during Ramadan is disrespectful," said Mehdi, a 23-year-old who did not want his full name published out of security concerns. Wearing a long white Muslim robe, he said: "There are Muslims who have nothing to do with these things. Now they find themselves mixed up in this story for nothing."

No further details were released about the two people injured in the explosion, though Hollande said their injuries were light.

The gas factory belongs to Air Products, an American chemical company based in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and owned by Seifi Ghasemi, an Iranian immigrant. The company said all its employees had been accounted for and were evacuated from the premises but did not say if any had been injured.

Air Products makes gases used by a wide range of industries, including food production, medicine and the oil and gas industry. It has more than 20,000 employees in 50 countries, mostly in the Americas, Europe and Asia.

A French security official told The Associated Press that the suspect apparently miscalculated about how explosive the chemicals he smashed into would be. Hollande said a major explosion appeared to have been the goal.

The international police agency Interpol was offering its investigative help to Tunisia, France and Kuwait, as well as Somalia, where extremists also struck Friday, in attacks that Interpol Secretary-General Juergen Stock said "show the truly global dimension to current terrorist threats."

In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren said it was too soon to tell whether Friday's violence was the work of Islamic State extremists. He said U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter had been briefed.

Source: The Huffington Post

France coach prepares battle for Germany juggernaut

Photo By Franck Fife

France coach Philippe Bergeroo could be preparing his side for a military campaign as they take on top-ranked Germany in the quarter-finals of the Women's World Cup on Friday.

"They need to be ready for physical combat, they need to be focussed on detail and to have no regrets at the end," said Bergeroo at the team's pre-match press conference.

"A steamroller, it's true Germany will exert huge physical pressure. We have other qualities but in the first 20 minutes we'll have to be very present in the duels," he continued

"We're playing against the team that is classed first in FIFA so we are the outsiders but we have a lot of ambition for that game."

France will be bidding to pull off the greatest exploits in their history in Montreal's domed Olympic Stadium.

If the French want to lift their first title on July 5 in Vancouver they have to beat the best and Germany are the best.

Champions in 2003 and 2007, eight-time European champions, Silvia Neid's side have what it takes to scare 'les Bleues' and have for a long time.

"I remember when I was 17 years old. You lost 3-0, didn't get a touch on the ball and returned home. They were really physically a class above the rest," recalled forward Eugenie Le Sommer.

But today, despite having never won an official match against their "best enemies," as defender Griedge Mbock Bathy terms the Germans, France believe they are equals.

"Germany doesn't scare us any more," said Le Sommer.

Goalkeeper Sarah Bouhaddi goes even further: "There is no feeling of inferiority. Very sincerely I think that we are better."

Germany have scored 19 goals in four games -- albeit 10 of those came against African minnows Ivory Coast -- and have not lost a game so far although they were pushed to a 1-1 draw by former champions Norway.

France by contrast have won three games but were shocked 2-0 by Colombia in their second group match.

And Bouhaddi will have her work cut out faced with a strike force duo of Celia Sasic and Anja Mittag, who have scored five each so far.

"They have a cabinet full of trophies and we've nothing. The balance of power is quickly summed up. As it stands we have two draws and a win," said Mbock Bathy.

But captain Wendie Renard was quick to point out a 2-0 friendly win in Offenbach does not compare to the world stage.

"We're off to a good start but we have to make it gel now, it's one thing to win friendly games but this is a different context."

- 'Who says Germany's better?' -

"Who says Germany are better than France?" said a surprised Neid when asked about her side's status as favourites.

"I did not say that, it will on depend how the team is on the given day whether we are better than France."

And Neid admitted that the German side that beat Brazil in the 2007 final would not win the title in 2015.

"Women's soccer has made quite a development since, the team from 2007 would not win today and even second or third place wouldn't get that place today.

"Players play harder, are more skilled and better trained, games are faster. We have followed this trend in women's soccer and now have these skills."

France have the advantage of having played their last 16 victory over South Korea in Montreal while for the Germans it will their first time in the roofed Olympic Stadium.

The French can also count on support from the crowd in the largely French-speaking city.

"It's a different feeling, we don't have this in Germany that you play inside in the summer," said Neid.

"I'm surprised a roof like this can't be opened in the summer. It will be different for us.

"We also know the French fans will be there in force, they will be singing, they will be very loud, we cannot be distracted by that.

"We just have to play our game hoping we manage to score an early goal."

Source: Yahoo Sports News