The body of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected ringleader of the deadly suicide bombings and shootings that left 129 people dead in Paris last week, has been formally identified.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said in brief statement that Abaaoud, who left for Syria in 2014 but was known to have returned to Europe at least once since, was one of two people killed in a ferocious firefight with police at a terrorist hideout north of Paris on Wednesday.
The mutilated body of the 27-year-old Belgian was found in the rubble of the badly damaged apartment in rue du Corbillon, St-Denis, the prosecutor’s office said, and identified from his fingerprints.
At least two people – a woman who apparently blew herself up by detonating an explosive vest, and a man hit by multiple gunshots and a grenade – were known to have died in the seven-hour assault on the rundown apartment block.
But identification took longer than expected because of the condition of the bodies and the dangerous state of the partly-collapsed building. French media have reported the dead woman was Abaaoud’s cousin, Hasna Aitboulahcen.
The Paris public prosecutor, François Molins, had said on Wednesday that neither Abaaoud nor Salah Abdeslam, another fugitive sought in connection with Friday’s terror, were among the eight people arrested at the scene.
The Belgian newspaper La Dernière Heure said Aitboulahcen, a 26-year-old French Moroccan national, had posted a photo on social media on 11 June expressing a desire to go to Syria.
Investigators have said the bloody attacks on Paris shops, restaurants, a concert hall and the Stade de France – barely two kilometres from the scene of Wednesday’s shootout – were carried out by a Belgium-based cell in close contact with Islamic State in Syria. The terror group was quick to claim responsibility, saying the killings were in retaliation for French airstrikes on Isis positions in Syria.
As the Belgian prime minister, Charles Michel, announced a package of additional anti-terror measures on Thursday and pledged €400m in extra funding to combat extremism, police raided six addresses in the Brussels region linked to Bilal Hadfi, one of three suicide bombers who blew themselves up outside the Stade de France.
Prosecutors have identified five of the seven attackers who died: four Frenchmen and a foreigner who was fingerprinted in Greece last month and later claimed asylum in Serbia. He was carrying a Syrian passport, possibly fake, in the name of Ahmad Almohammad.
Police are still hunting one of the supposed gunmen, 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam, whose brother Brahim blew himself up in the attacks, and another unidentified man they believe was directly involved.
Two suspected accomplices identified as Mohammed Amri, 27, and Hamza Attou, 21, who allegedly drove Salah Abdeslam back from Paris to the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek, a longstanding hotbed of Islamic extremism, after the attacks, are being questioned by police in Belgium.
French police have made 60 arrests and seized 75 weapons after more than 400 raids across the country.
Abdelhamid Abaaoud profile
Abdelhamid Abaaoud has been named by French officials as the “presumed” mastermind of the co-ordinated attacks.
The jihadi was linked to a thwarted attack on a high-speed train in August which was stopped as it sped towards Paris when passengers overpowered a gunman, and an attack on a church in the Paris area.
Abaaoud grew up in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek, which has emerged as a key focus of investigations into the Paris atrocity. He is said to have recruited his 13-year-old brother to join him in Syria and become one of IS’s youngest fighters.
Abaaoud is well known to followers of IS and last year a video emerged of him and friends loading a pick-up truck and a trailer with a pile of bloody bodies.
Before driving off in the footage, Abaaoud told the camera: “Before we towed jet skis, motorcycles, quad bikes, big trailers filled with gifts for vacation in Morocco. Now, thank God, following God’s path, we’re towing apostates.”
His whereabouts were unknown after the attack, with the IS magazine Dabiq suggesting he escaped to Syria earlier this year.
Following a dramatic police shoot-out in Saint Denis on Wednesday, the Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed that Abaaoud died in the raid and his body had been identified from skin samples.
Guardian Service and PA