Police made more than 150 raids across France overnight following the attacks on Paris, French prime minister Manuel Valls has revealed as he warned terrorists are planning more strikes in Europe.
Key developments
- French jets have launched strikes on the Isis stronghold of Raqqa, Syria
- French police are looking for a suspect named as Salah Abdeslam, 26, a French national, who is still on the loose
- Police have carried out more than 150 raids overnight across France
- There will be a minute’s silence across Europe on Monday at 11am GMT
- Authorities in Belgium have arrested at least five people in relation to a car with Belgian number plates found near the scene in Paris
Mr Valls said France would continue air strikes against Isis targets in Syria as prosecutors provided details of two more of the men who carried out the shootings and suicide bombings in Paris on Friday night that killed at least 129 people.
The police raids, which focused mainly on Toulouse, Grenoble and Lyon, were conducted using powers available to police under the state of emergency declared by President François Hollande.
“We are making use of the legal framework of the state of emergency to question people who are part of the radical jihadist movement . . . and all those who advocate hate of the republic,” Mr Valls said in an interview on RTL radio, according to news agencies.
Mr Valls added: “Terrorism has struck and can strike again, these days, in the coming weeks.”
The French state prosecutor’s office said on Monday morning it had identified a further two of the suicide bombers. It named one as Samy Amimour, a 28-year-old who was born in Paris and had been investigated in October 2012 for links to terrorist activity.
Amimour violated travel restrictions placed on him in 2013 and had been subject to an international arrest warrant at that time, according to the prosecutor’s office. He was named as one of the attackers at the Bataclan concert venue.
The other newly identified suicide bomber, a Syrian national, took part in an attack at the Stade de France on Friday night. A Syrian passport in the name of Ahmad Al Mohammad found at the scene of the attack was located near his body. But François Molins, the Paris public prosecutor, said the authenticity of the passport “had yet to be verified”.
According to AFP, five people were arrested in Lyon where police discovered a cache of military-grade weapons including a rocket launcher. There are no indications yet from the authorities whether any of the arrests are linked to Friday’s attacks.
Separately, a manhunt is continuing for Salah Abdeslam, whose brother Ibrahim has been named as the suicide bomber on Boulevard Voltaire. A third brother has been arrested in Belgium.
France launched air strikes against Isis targets in Syria on Sunday night, with jets bombing the Islamist terror group’s stronghold of Raqqa.
The strikes came hours after France and the US pledged to step up the campaign against Isis in response to the chilling, co-ordinated terrorist attacks in Paris that killed at least 129 people and wounded more than 350.
Mr Valls said that since this summer, French intelligence services had prevented five attacks.
“We know that more attacks are being prepared, not just against France but also against other European countries,” Mr Valls said.
Speaking in Antalya at the G20 summit on Sunday, Laurent Fabius, French foreign minister, said: “France has always said that because she has been threatened and attacked by [Isis] it would be normal that she react in the framework of self defence. It would be normal to take action. That’s what we did with the strikes on Raqqa, which is their headquarters. We cannot let [Isis] act without reacting.”
The French defence ministry said 12 aircraft had taken part in raids on a command centre, munitions depot and training camp in Raqqa. The strikes were launched in co-ordination with US forces.
The flurry of air strikes marks a significant escalation of French involvement in the conflict in Syria. It also follows an agreement on Sunday by the Pentagon to accelerate the process for sharing intelligence about potential Isis targets with the French military.
The commitment to “intensify” action against the Islamist group in Syria came as France and Belgium launched a manhunt for Mr Abdeslam, after the Friday night assault deemed “an act of war” by Mr Hollande. Seven suspects died in the attacks — six set off their explosives and one was shot by the police.
Mr Valls has suggested that the state of emergency giving sweeping new investigative powers to police forces could be extended beyond 12 days — a move that would require approval by parliament.
World leaders attending the G20 meeting in Turkey were united in condemning what US President Barack Obama called an attack “on the civilised world”. But they are struggling to rethink an anti-Isis strategy against the militant group behind the most complex series of attacks since September 11 2001.
Ben Rhodes, the US deputy national security adviser, said he was confident that in “coming days and weeks” the US and France would “intensify our strikes against [Isis] . . . to make clear there is no safe haven for these terrorists”.
Besides raising questions over the vulnerability of European capitals to terrorism, the Paris attacks revived rightwing calls for tighter border controls across the EU, further complicating an already fraught debate over the migration crisis.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, hit back at demands — from eastern Europe in particular — for tighter borders, calling on politicians to stop conflating refugees with murderers.
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, showed little sign of rethinking her approach to migration amid claims that one of the Paris attackers slipped into Europe with the flow of migrants through Greece.
Stressing the need to avoid jumping to conclusions, Ms Merkel said: “We owe this to the victims and their relatives [and] to the many innocent refugees that are fleeing war and terrorism.”
Brussels’ concerns that the refugee crisis could upend the migration debate and place Europe’s passport-free Schengen zone in peril were underlined by Markus Söder, the Bavarian finance minister and member of the CSU, sister party to Ms Merkel’s CDU, who said: “Paris changes everything.” If Germany could not secure its borders, he said, “then Bavaria can take on this task”.
With Republican US presidential candidates pressing for Nato to invoke Article V and declare the attacks an assault on all members of the Atlantic military alliance, the White House has joined Paris in planning for reinforced strikes in Syria.
During what White House officials described as a “constructive” meeting with President Vladimir Putin at the G20 talks, Mr Obama attempted to overcome differences with the Russian leader regarding Syria and agree ways to fight Isis.
Republican presidential candidates were not satisfied with the Obama administration’s pledges. They accused the president of being soft on Isis before the Paris attacks, and urged more aggressive US moves against the group, including the deployment of additional special forces troops.
Marco Rubio, one of the main candidates, said: “We’re going to have to conduct an increased number of special operations attacks, targeting Isis leadership and revealing that they are not invincible.”