France raid

2 killed, 8 held after France raid, but ringleader's status still unknown

By Greg Botelho and Paul Cruickshank

French authorities took the offensive Wednesday, raiding a purported hideout of the ringleader in last week's deadly Paris attacks in an ordeal that ended with eight detained, two dead and potentially more bloodshed thwarted in the European nation.

But what about that ringleader, Abdelhamid Abaaoud?

Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said Wednesday that Abaaoud, a Frenchman who's thought to have recently come from ISIS' de facto capital of Raqqa in Syria, was thought to have holed up at one point on the third floor of an apartment building in Saint-Denis, a northern Paris suburb. Whether he was there when scores of heavily armed French police launched their assault at 4:20 a.m. Wednesday (10:20 p.m. ET Tuesday) is unknown.

Authorities zeroed in on the building in Saint-Denis after picking up phone conversations indicating that a relative of Abaaoud might be there. They met fierce resistance from the start, including a woman who blew herself up and bullets flying back and forth for about an hour. The French officers even used powerful munitions, which led to one floor collapsing.

That violence produced rubble that included body parts, on which investigators are conducting DNA tests, trying to pinpoint the identities of the two slain terrorists.

Molins did note that neither Abaaoud or Salah Abdeslam, who also was allegedly involved in last week's bloodshed, are among the eight detained.

French President Francois Hollande held up the vicious back-and-forth as further proof that "we are at war" with ISIS.

"What the terrorists were targeting was what France represents. This is what was attacked on the night of November 13th," he said. "These barbarians targeted France's diversity. It was the youth of France who were targeted simply because they represent life."

Given this threat, Hollande has proposed extending France's state of emergency for three more months -- a measure that, among other things, gives authorities greater powers in conducting searches, holding people and dissolving certain groups. He'll also appeal to world leaders -- including meeting next week with U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who have been at odds on what to do in Syria -- to go after the savage Islamist extremist group.

"There is no more ... divide. There are only men and women of duty," he said. "... We must destroy this army that menaces the entire world, not just some countries."

As France learned Friday -- when a series of coordinated attacks left a trail of horror, sorrow and questions, with 129 dead and hundreds more wounded -- terrorists act with savagery on their own schedule.

And those in Saint-Denis were -- judging by their weapons, their organized structure and their determination -- "prepared to act" in possibly another attack, Molins said.

Some 110 police swarmed on the diverse, working-class area that is home to the Stade de France sports stadium -- where three suicide bombings took place days earlier. They first went into one apartment that had been under surveillance since Tuesday, a Paris police source said. That raid led them to another apartment on the same street.

"We could see the bullets," a woman, who identified herself only as Sabrine, told CNN affiliate France 2 of the drama. "We could feel the building shaking."

Three people in the Saint-Denis building itself, including one with a bullet wound in the arm, are among the eight detained, according to Molins. The others include the person who loaned the apartment to the suspected terrorists and his friend. Two of the eight held were hospitalized, Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet told France Info radio.

Five French officers, meanwhile, were slightly wounded, while a police dog died in the operation, according to police.

Saadana Aymen, a 29-year-old who lives one street down, couldn't believe what was happening in his neighborhood.

"When you think of Saint-Denis, you don't think of terrorists," he told CNN. "I'm shocked! Why would the terrorists pick this neighborhood?"

Yet Saint-Denis wasn't the only place where French authorities fanned out Tuesday night into Wednesday, as part of their security clampdown.

The Interior Ministry announced 118 searches led to the detention of at least 25 people, the confiscation of 34 weapons and the discovery of illicit drugs in 16 instances. This is on top of hundreds of similar operations conducted in recent days, which have resulted in 64 people being held and 118 put under house arrest.

Authorities have not yet laid out what connection any of these arrests have to Friday's attacks. Yet counterterrorism and intelligence officials say that investigators have uncovered what could be a big break: cell phones believed to belong to the attackers.

Molins said that one of the attacker's cell phones, containing a telltale message saying roughly "here we go, it's starting," was found in a trash bin outside Le Bataclan theater where most of Friday's victims were ruthlessly gunned down.

Investigators have found encrypted apps on the phones, which appear to have left no trace of messages or any indication of who would have been receiving them, according to officials briefed on the French investigation.

Seven attackers died during Friday night's wave of violence, and an international arrest warrant is out for one suspect, Salah Abdeslam, a 26-year-old Frenchman. The identity of the possible ninth suspect, seen in a video that shows two gunmen inside a black car and perhaps a third person driving the vehicle, is unknown.

Mohamed Abdeslam has urged his younger brother Salah, who was stopped but then let go en route to the Belgian border hours after the attacks, to turn himself into authorities. He acknowledged noticing Salah and another brother -- 31-year-old Ibrahim, who is among the seven terrorists killed -- had been adopting more radical views, though that didn't mean the family isn't shocked.

"My brother who participated in this terrorist act must have been psychologically ready to commit such an act. These are not regular people," he told CNN.

"You cannot have the slightest doubt that they have been prepared, that they must not leave any trace which would cause suspicion that they might do such things. And even if you saw them every day, their behavior was quite normal."

Both Salah Abdeslam and Ibrahim were known to authorities: Belgian prosecutor Eric Van Der Sypt told CNN's Ivan Watson police questioned the Abdeslam brothers in February. The brothers were released, the federal prosecutor said, after they denied wanting to go to Syria.

And Salah Abdeslam and Abaaoud served time together in a Belgian prison in 2011, when the former spent a month for an alleged theft, a Belgian federal prosecutor said.

Belgian authorities believe Abaaoud has spent previous months in Raqqa, a counterrrorism official in that European nation said. There, in Syria, Abaaoud is thought to have worked with senior French figures in ISIS -- members of the so-called Artigat network including Sabri Essid and Fabien Clain, whose voiceis on the ISIS claim of responsibility for the Paris attacks -- to plot a series of attacks in France.

Already, Essid and Clain have been traced to an April plot to attack a Paris church and the August armed assault on an Amsterdam-to-Paris train that was thwarted by three Americans.

As to those behind the latest violence, Belgian authorities didn't even know Abaaoud was back in Europe, according to the counterterrorism official. They'd also lost track of Salah Abdeslam.

And, the senior Belgian official said, the bombmaker who made the suicide vests used in Paris is also thought to still be at large.