Hasna Aitboulahcen: Third Body Recovered from Paris Flat Following Raid
French prosecutors have said that a third body has been recovered from the apartment in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis raided by police after last week’s attacks.
They confirmed the body was that of Hasna Aitboulahcen, and was found overnight in a search of the flat following November 18 raid.
Hasna Aitboulahcen, 26, is widely reported to have been the cousin of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, and blew herself up.
Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected mastermind of Paris attacks, was also killed in the raid.
The near-simultaneous attacks by suicide bombers and gunmen on bars and restaurants, the Bataclan concert hall and Stade de France stadium on November 13 killed 129 people and left hundreds of people wounded.
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ISIS said it was behind the attacks.
Demonstrations have been banned under France’s state of emergency, but dozens of French artists and cultural figures have urged people to make a lot of “noise and light”, by turning on music and lights, at 21:20 local time on November 20 to mark the exact time a week ago that the attacks began.
Prosecutors have now confirmed the identities of two of the three suspects who died in the seven-hour-long raid in the Rue Cormillon apartment on November 18.
The prosecutor’s office said Hasna Aitboulahcen’s passport was found near her body.
News that Abdelhamid Abaaoud – a well-known face of ISIS and on international “most wanted” lists – and at least one of his accomplices may have travelled undetected from Syria before carrying out the attacks has raised fears about the security of the European Union’s borders.
EU interior ministers are meeting in Brussels to discuss tougher measures, including tightening the external borders of the passport-free Schengen area.
France’s Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, on his way into the meeting, said the EU had “wasted too much time on a number of urgent issues” and hoped “today takes the decisions that we must take”.
A draft resolution for today’s EU meeting says ministers will agree to implement “necessary systematic and co-ordinated checks at external borders, including on individuals enjoying the right of free movement”.
This means EU citizens, along with non-EU citizens, will have their passports routinely checked against a database of known or suspected terrorists and those involved in organized crime.
Ministers will also consider cracking down on the movement of firearms within the EU, the collection of passenger data for those taking internal flights and also blocking funding for terrorists.