Paris attacks: French seek to identify raid bodies

Police said Abdelhamid Abaaoud was the target when officers stormed the flat in the Paris suburb of Saint Denis.

The Paris prosecutor said he was not among eight people arrested at the flat but human remains found there had still to be identified.

Meanwhile, French MPs are due to vote on extending a state of emergency.

The so-called Islamic State (IS), which controls parts of Syria and Iraq, has said it was behind the attacks last Friday, when gunmen and suicide bombers killed 129 people and injured hundreds.

The Washington Post quoted unnamed European officials as saying Abaaoud, 27, had been killed on Wednesday when heavily armed police stormed the building in the suburb of Saint Denis.

However, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins had earlier said he could not give "a precise and definitive number for the people who died, nor their identities, but there are at least two dead people".

One of the dead was a woman believed to have detonated a suicide belt as police moved in. A source close to the investigation said she could have been a cousin of Abaaoud, Reuters reported.

Mr Molins said it appeared that a "new team of terrorists" had been ready for a fresh attack.

A leader of one of the special forces units that took part in the raid said drones and robots equipped with cameras had been used to try to see inside the flat during the operation but there was too much debris.

Jean-Michel Fauverge told Le Figaro newspaper that when they entered the building they found a body that had fallen from the third floor to the second.

"The corpse was mutilated, probably from grenades and he wasn't recognisable," he said.

"Other people were in the stairwell, two men hiding under blankets and whatever they could find. We arrested them."

None of those arrested has so far been named. However, police said they did not include Salah Abdeslam, a 26-year-old French national identified as a suspect in Friday's killings and believed to be on the run. Seven other militants died in the attacks.

Abaaoud is reported to be a key figure in an IS cell that US intelligence agencies have been tracking for months, AP news agency reported, citing US officials.

He was believed to have escaped to Syria following a police operation in Belgium in January and has boasted in IS propaganda of being able to move between Europe and Syria undetected.

Following Friday's attacks on a concert hall, cafes and the Stade de France stadium, President Francois Hollande declared a state of emergency for 12 days.

The bill going before France's lower house of parliament on Thursday and the senate on Friday includes:

Extending the state of emergency for three months

Placing under house arrest anyone deemed to be a public threat

Barring suspects from communicating between each other

Allowing police to carry out searches at any time, without the prior approval of a judge, if the public is thought to be in danger

IS said it had carried out the attacks in response to France's air campaign against its positions in Syria, and pledged further bloodshed.

France has since stepped up its air strikes against IS targets in Syria.

Both France and Russia - which is also targeting militants in Syria - are putting together draft resolutions at the UN Security Council that would lay out an international approach to defeating IS.

President Hollande has urged the council to approve a resolution on fighting IS quickly.

(BBC)