Paris Attacks: Who was the third person killed in epic police raid?

PARIS: One week after the Paris attacks, French investigators have managed to hunt down and kill the ringleader and fully identify four of the seven gunmen and suicide bombers who died carrying out the bloodshed. [caption id=“attachment_2515806” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Salah Abdeslam, still on the run/ AFP[/caption] As an increasingly detailed picture emerges of a network of European-born jihadists with ties to Syria, investigators are working around the clock to find Salah Abdeslam, an eighth gunman who is still on the run. They are also working to identify a third person killed in a seven-hour police raid on Wednesday alongside wanted Belgian Islamist Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who coordinated the carnage, and his 26-year-old female cousin. A police source told AFP Friday that it is thought to be a man. Prosecutors also said Friday that two of the three men who blew themselves up near the Stade de France stadium had entered Europe through Greece, posing as refugees fleeing the Syrian war. Who was the third person killed in Wednesday’s raid? Following the raid on the northern Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, police said they had recovered two bodies, one of which was that of 28-year-old Abaaoud whose bullet-ridden corpse was identified by handprint analysis. The second body was that of a person whom police said had blown themselves up and initially believed to be his cousin, Hasna Aitboulahcen, a 26-year-old French woman of Moroccan origin. But on Friday, police confirmed they had discovered a third body in the rubble overnight – identifying it through the fingerprints as Aitboulahcen. They said she had not blown herself up. So who was the third person who detonated an explosives belt during the police raid? Could it be that of the suspected missing gunman Abdeslam? Investigators are currently examining body parts, apparently those of a man, to try to determine the identity. Where was Abaaoud during the attacks? The Belgian jihadist, who was believed to be in Syria, somehow slipped unnoticed into Europe despite an international warrant for his arrest, most likely among the hundreds of thousands of refugees who have entered the continent since the start of the year, raising urgent questions over border security. But where was he on the night of the carnage? According to CCTV footage, he was at the Croix de Chavaux Metro station in Montreuil, eastern Paris, at around 10:15 pm (2115 GMT), less than an hour after a team of gunmen began an assault on a series of five bars and restaurants in the city centre, a police source said. That series of attacks began at 9:25 pm with several witnesses saying the gunmen fired from a black Seat car which was later found abandoned by police on Saturday night in Montreuil. Inside were three Kalashnikov assault rifles, 11 empty magazines and five full ones. Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said this week that three cars, the Seat, a Polo and a Renault Clio, arrived in convoy from Belgium on the eve of the attacks. They were rented by the brothers Brahim and Salah Abdeslam, who lived in Belgium. Brahim blew himself up outside a bar in the bustling Boulevard Voltaire, and police believe his brother, who is still at large, was also one of the shooters. Witnesses spoke of a third person with them. So was Abaaoud driving and later dumped the car in Montreuil? Or was he also one of the shooters – and if so, who was driving? Three bodies still unnamed So far, four of the gunmen and suicide bombers have been named, all of them French nationals: Bilal Hadfi, 20, who blew himself up outside the stade de France and Brahim Abdeslam, 31, who blew himself up outside a bar on Boulevard Voltaire. Two others, Samy Amimour, 28, and Omar Ismail Mostefai, 29, were part of a three-man team who attacked the Bataclan concert hall where a rock band was playing. On Friday, prosecutors said the other two men who detonated explosives vests outside the stadium had entered Europe through Greece on the same day, October 3, pretending to be refugees fleeing the war in Syria. Investigators have not yet released the identity of those two men – a Syrian passport in the name of Ahmad Al Mohammad was found next to one of them but it could be a fake – and the third assailant at the Bataclan has also not been identified.