Prosecutors: Mastermind of Paris Attack Killed in Police Raid

Paris, France - The suspected mastermind of the deadly terror attack on Paris was killed in a police raid, French prosecutors said Thursday morning. Abdelhamid Abaaoud was thought to be behind the attack last Friday night that killed 129 people.

Police raided an apartment in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis on Wednesday. That raid led to a standoff that lasted for hours. Two suspects died in that raid, and eight others were taken into custody. The Paris prosecutors say they identified Abaaoud as one of the dead suspects by testing skin samples.

Police launched the operation after receiving information from tapped phone calls, surveillance and tipoffs suggesting that Abaaoud was holed up there.

Frnech Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned Thursday that Islamic extremists might at some point use chemical or biological weapons, and urged lawmakers to extend a national state of emergency by three months.

"Terrorism hit France not because of what it is doing in Iraq and Syria ... but for what it is," Valls told the lower house of Parliament.  He added, "We know that there could also be a risk of chemical or biological weapons."

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius urged the international community to do more to eradicate the Islamic State group, which claimed responsibility for last Friday's attacks on a rock concert, Parisian cafes and the national stadium.

Fabius, speaking on France-Inter radio, said the group "is a monster. But if all the countries in the world aren't capable of fighting against 30,000 people (IS members), it's incomprehensible."

France has stepped up its airstrikes against extremists in Syria since the attack, and French President Francois Hollande is going to Washington and Moscow next week to push for a stronger international coalition against IS.

Speaking after the seven-hour siege in Saint-Denis, Hollande said that France was "at war" with the Islamic State group.

In its English-language magazine, Islamic State said it will continue its violence and "retaliate with fire and bloodshed" for insults against the Prophet Muhammad and "the multitudes killed and injured in crusader airstrikes."

Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said Wednesday that investigators found a cell phone in a garbage can outside the Bataclan concert hall in eastern Paris where 89 of the victims of Friday's carnage died. It contained a text message sent about 20 minutes after the massacre began. "We're off, it's started," it read.

Molins said investigators were still trying to identify the recipient of the message.

French authorities have said most of the Friday attackers -- five have been identified so far -- were unknown to them. But two U.S. officials said that many, though not all, of those identified were on the U.S. no-fly list. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the issue publicly.