Manhunt continues after Paris attacks architect killed

French soldiers secure the area as shots are exchanged in Saint-Denis, France on Wednesday [Jacky Naegelen/Reuters]


French police continued the search on Friday for a suspect on the run one week since the Paris attacks after it was announced the alleged planner was killed in a raid.

French police are still looking for Salah Abdeslam, 26, after the attacks that killed 129 people and wounded at least 350 others.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls said France does not know if Abdeslam is in France or Belgium, or if more groups involved with the gunmen are still at large.

“The threat is there. We don’t know at this point in the investigation if there are groups, individuals, who are directly linked to the attack on Friday evening,” Valls told France 2 television. “We don’t know yet one can imagine. That’s why the threat is still there.”

Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the alleged architect of the atrocity, was killed in a police raid in the Saint-Denis area, the Paris prosecutor announced on Thursday.

“Abdelhamid Abaaoud has just been formally identified … as having been killed during the raid” in the northern Paris suburb on Wednesday, Francois Molins said in a statement.

The confirmation of his death followed fingerprint analysis, Molins added.

Abaaoud, a 27-year-old Belgian national of Moroccan origin, allegedly orchestrated the attacks claimed by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).