Abdelhamid Abaaoud dead: 'Mastermind' behind Paris terror attacks confirmed killed in St Denis raids

France's Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve described his role in the Paris attacks as "pivotal" and said he was involved in four out of six failed terror plots
Dead: Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected mastermind behind the Paris terror attacks
Jamie Bullen19 November 2015

Paris attacks mastermind Abdelhamid Abaaoud was only able to be identified through skin samples after being killed in yesterday's siege in St Denis.

French authorities were only able to confirm on Tuesday that the man killed 24 hours earlier when police stormed an apartment building was the 27-year-old Belgian militant.

And France's Interior Minister Bernard Cazenueve also revealed Abaaoud was involved in four out of six other terrorist attacks thwarted by French intelligence.

Mr Cazenueve described Abaaoud's role in Friday's massacre of 129 people in Paris as "pivotal".

The other attacks included an attack on a Paris-bound high-speed train that was foiled by three young Americans in August, and the other against a church in the French capital's suburbs.

Mr Cazenueve said the plots were planned abroad but carried out by military trained jihadists living in Europe, who are sent back to carry out the attack.

He also revealed security services were unaware Abaaoud had returned to Europe, having previously fled to Syria.

Police originally thought Abaaoud was in Syria, but their investigations led them to a house in the Paris suburb of St Denis and heavily armed officers stormed the building before dawn, triggering a massive firefight and multiple explosions.

Two terrorist suspects died in the operation including a woman suicide bomber - suspected to be his cousin - who detonated her device during the gunfight.

"Abdel Hamid Abaaoud has just been formally identified, after comparing fingerprints, as having been killed during the (police) raid," a statement from the French prosecutor said. "It was the body we had discovered in the building, riddled with bullets."

Abaaoud was linked to an attack on a Paris-bound high-speed train in August 

Details about Abaaoud began to emerge after he was named the prime suspect behind Friday's atrocities.

Once described a "happy-go-lucky student" at one of Brussels' most prestigious high schools, Abaaoud radicalised to become Belgium's most notorious jihadi.

The child of Moroccan immigrants, he even recruited his 13-year-old brother to join him in Syria to fight alongside Islamic State.

In a video made public last year, Abaaoud said: "All my life, I have seen the blood of Muslims flow.

"I pray that Allah will break the backs of those who oppose him, his soldiers and his admirers, and that he will exterminate them."

Belgian authorities suspected him of helping to organise and finance a terror cell in the eastern city of Verviers that was broken up in an armed police raid in January in which his two accomplices were killed.

The following month, he was quoted by Islamic State's English-language magazine Dabiq as saying that he had secretly returned to Belgium to lead the terror cell and then escaped to Syria in the aftermath of the raid, despite having his picture broadcast across the news.

He boasted: "I was even stopped by an officer who contemplated me so as to compare me to the picture, but he let me go, as he did not see the resemblance!"

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