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Manhunt Underway as Investigation of Paris Attacks Widens
France Strikes ISIS Targets in Syria in Retaliation for Attacks
(about 4 hours later)
PARIS — The Paris terrorist attacks were carried out with the help of three French brothers living in Belgium, the authorities said on Sunday, as they asked for the public’s assistance in finding one of them.
PARIS — France bombed the Syrian city of Raqqa on Sunday night, its most aggressive strike against the Islamic State group it blames for killing 129 people in a string of terrorist attacks across Paris only two days before.
The French authorities said they were seeking Abdeslam Salah, 26, and described him as dangerous. The police warned the public: “Do not intervene on your own, under any circumstances.” Belgian officials said that his brother Ibrahim had died in the three-hour massacre and that another brother, Mohamed, had been detained Saturday in the Molenbeek area of Brussels.
President François Hollande, who vowed to be “unforgiving with the barbarians” of the Islamic State after the carnage in Paris, decided on the airstrikes in a meeting with his national security team on Saturday, officials said.
The carefully coordinated attacks on Friday night, which killed at least 129 people and are believed to be the work of the Islamic State, increasingly appear to have involved extensive planning by a network of men with sophisticated weapons who plotted the attack from outside the country.
While France has been conducting scores of airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq, it had been bombing inside Syria only sparingly, wary of inadvertently strengthening the hand of President Bashar al-Assad by killing his enemies.
The French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, after meeting in Paris with his Belgian counterpart, Jan Jambon, said the attackers had “prepared abroad and had mobilized a team of participants located on Belgian territory, and who may have benefited — the investigation will tell us more — from complicity in France.”
But after militants with AK-47 rifles and suicide explosives vests shattered the peaceful revelry of Paris on Friday night, killing dozens of civilians in restaurants and at a concert hall, France seemed intent on sending a clear message of its determination to curb the Islamic State and its ability to carry out attacks outside the territory it controls.
French officials initially said eight attackers died Friday, but on Saturday night said that only seven were dead — six by detonating suicide bombs and one in a shootout with the police. On Sunday, intelligence officials said they were looking for an eighth man believed to have been involved in the attacks, and hours later, the police released Mr. Salah’s name and photo.
The French Defense Ministry said in a statement that the air raid, coordinated with American forces, was led by 12 French aircraft, including 10 fighter jets, and had destroyed two Islamic State targets in Raqqa, the radical group’s self-proclaimed capital.
The Salah brothers lived in Molenbeek, an impoverished section of Brussels that is mostly populated by immigrants from the Arab world and that has been linked to violence. “We don’t have control of the situation in Molenbeek at present,” Mr. Jambon told VRT, a television channel.
The United States provided French officials with information to help them strike Islamic State targets in Syria, known as “strike packages,” American officials said.
Amedy Coulibaly, who was involved in the deadly assault on a Jewish supermarket in January, is believed to have bought weapons in Molenbeek, as is Mehdi Nemmouche, a Frenchman who targeted the Jewish Museum of Belgium in 2014, killing four people. Ayoub El Khazzani, a Moroccan who was thwarted in his attempt to attack passengers on a high-speed train traveling to Paris from Amsterdam, is also thought to have lived there for a while.
Initial reports from activists on the ground in Raqqa, which could not be verified independently, said that hospitals had not reported any civilian casualties. Yet they also said the targeted sites included clinics, a museum and other buildings in an urban area, leaving the full extent of the damage unknown.
“I notice that each time there is a link with Molenbeek,” Prime Minister Charles Michel of Belgium said on Sunday. “This is a gigantic problem.”
The French military response capped another tense day in the wake of the attacks across Paris on Friday night. The authorities hunted for an eighth suspect believed to be on the loose, while seeking to piece together how the assailants got the training, weapons and explosives they used.
Crucial, if sparse, details about other attackers came into view on Sunday.
President Obama and other world leaders, including President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, gathered at a summit meeting in Turkey, grappling with how to respond to the Islamic State, the civil war in Syria and the mass emigration from the region toward Europe.
One attacker — whose nationality is not yet known — evidently posed as a Syrian migrant. The Serbian newspaper Blic published a photograph of a passport page that identified its holder as Ahmad al-Mohammad, 25, a native of Idlib, Syria. He passed through the Greek island of Leros on Oct. 3 and the Serbian border town of Presevo on Oct. 7, officials in those countries said. It was not clear whether the passport was authentic; the civil war that has sent millions of Syrians fleeing and fueled the rise of the Islamic State has also created a large black market for forged Syrian passports.
Paris remained jittery all day, and early in the evening unfounded reports of gunfire prompted an evacuation of the Place de la République, in the heart of the city.
The first attacker to be identified by the authorities was Ismaël Omar Mostefaï, 29, a native of Courcouronnes, France, who had been living in Chartres, 60 miles southwest of Paris, and who, along with two other gunmen, killed 89 people at the Bataclan concert hall.
The revelations that at least four French citizens were involved in the attacks — three brothers and a man who lived around Chartres, about 60 miles southwest of Paris — seemed certain to exacerbate longstanding fears in France about the place of Muslim immigrants and converts in French society. Even before the latest violence, the nation was still reeling from a smaller set of deadly attacks on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, at a kosher grocery and against a police officer only 10 months earlier.
Mr. Mostefaï was the middle of five children born to an Algerian father and a Portuguese mother, and he once worked at a bakery, according to a former neighbor at the housing development just outside Chartres where the family used to live.
The French airstrikes on Raqqa began at 7:50 p.m. Paris time, first taking aim at an Islamic State “command post, jihadist recruitment center and weapons and ammunition depot,” the Defense Ministry said. The second target, it said, was a “terrorist training camp.”
“It was a normal family, just like everybody else,” said the neighbor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “He played with my children. He never spoke about religion. He was normal. He had a joie de vivre. He laughed a lot.”
Warplanes continued to hover over the city close to midnight, according to residents and activist groups. Residents have seen the city bombed by Syrian, American and Russian warplanes. They have been terrorized by public executions by the Islamic State. Now they are wary of yet another power arriving to pummel the city.
For reasons that are unclear, Mr. Mostefaï changed. “It was in 2010, that’s when he started to become radicalized,” the neighbor said. “We don’t understand what happened.”
Khaled al-Homsi, an antigovernment activist from Palmyra, who uses a nom de guerre for his safety and is the nephew of an archaeologist who was beheaded by Islamic State fighters, issued a plea on Twitter to France, saying not all of the city’s residents were Islamic State members and urging caution for the safety of civilians.
As the authorities continued to examine Mr. Mostefaï’s motivations and background, other clues emerged from official accounts in France and Belgium.
“To the people & government in #France, #Raqqa City residents are not all #ISIS,” he tweeted. “Please do not targets at random.”
Two vehicles used in the attacks had been rented in Belgium early last week, the federal prosecutor for Brussels announced on Sunday. One of them, a gray Volkswagen Polo, was abandoned near the Bataclan after being used by the three terrorists who died there.
Reports on the strikes began flowing from the Raqqa area about 9:30 p.m. local time, with activists on the ground counting six at first, the numbers mounting minute by minute. It was a heavier barrage than has typically hit the city and its environs, and it knocked out electricity and water service, spreading more fear than usual among civilians.
The other, a black Seat Leon, was found early Sunday morning in the eastern Paris suburb of Montreuil. Three Kalashnikov rifles were found inside it. The vehicle may have been used as a getaway car for the shooters at restaurants in central Paris.
The reports were shared by several activist networks, including Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, an organization of current and former Raqqa residents who report on events there.
The Belgian authorities announced that they had detained seven men. Abdeslam Salah and two other men passed through a roadside check in Cambrai, France, at 9:10 a.m. Saturday, while on the A2 highway heading to Belgium. They made their way to Molenbeek, where the authorities seized the car later on Saturday afternoon and arrested Mr. Salah’s companions and, separately, his brother; it is not clear how Mr. Salah got away.
The group was recently victimized by a provocative crime: the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, claimed responsibility for beheading two members of the activist group in Turkey, a move that was surprising in that it was carried out beyond the territory the Islamic State controls.
The revelations that at least four men believed to be involved in the plot — the Salah brothers, and Mr. Mostefaï — were French citizens were likely to exacerbate long-standing fears in France about the place of Muslim immigrants and converts in French society, 10 months after a smaller set of deadly attacks on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, the kosher grocery and against a police officer.
The Islamic State has also claimed responsibility for the downing of a Russian passenger jetliner over Egypt, killing all 224 people aboard, intensifying concerns that the group’s reach and ambitions for sowing terror are expanding.
Mr. Mostefaï was one of three hostage-takers at the Bataclan on Friday, and was identified based on a print from a severed finger.
France has been among the most outspoken opponents of Mr. Assad. In 2013, it was prepared to join the United States in attacking his government after proof emerged that he was using chemical weapons against his own people. When President Obama decided against attacking Mr. Assad, France suspended its plans.
Mr. Mostefaï grew up around Chartres, where he lived until 2012. According to the Paris prosecutor, François Molins, he was arrested in connection with a series of low-level crimes from 2004 to 2010 and had been under surveillance since 2010, having been flagged in a French security services database as someone who had fallen under the influence of extremist Islamist beliefs. Six of his relatives have been detained for questioning; on Sunday, other relatives told French television that he had been estranged from them.
Mr. Hollande’s government began bombing Islamic State-held territory in Iraq in September 2014, and it has carried out about 280 airstrikes since then.
In his Facebook post, Mayor Jean-Pierre Gorges of Chartres expressed despair and frustration. “How many deaths will occur before our political leaders understand and take action?” he asked, describing the “emotion, incomprehension and anger” he felt at the deaths.
But it has only begun to strike targets inside Syria in the last seven weeks, and had carried out fewer than a half dozen bombings there before Sunday. France has struck training camps, and just last week it attacked an oil and gas depot, according to a statement by the French Defense Ministry.
Mayor Gorges called for strong action, without asking questions first. “Our leaders don’t need to prove they are legitimate; we have elected them, so they take responsibility of the executive power of the republic,” he wrote on Facebook. “Their duty is to act effectively, and ultimately we don’t need to know how.”
Jean Yves le Drian, the French defense minister, in an interview in the Journal du Dimanche, said the oil and gas target was chosen because the Islamic State uses the black market sale of oil and gas as a way to finance its weapon acquisition.
On Sunday, Mr. Hollande met his predecessor and political rival, Nicolas Sarkozy, at the Élysée Palace. Afterward, Mr. Sarkozy urged decisive action against the Islamic State — a position Mr. Hollande has also taken.
There is a growing focus on both reducing the Islamic State’s territory and its financing, said French government officials and experts.
“We need everybody in order to exterminate Daesh, and especially the Russians,” Mr. Sarkozy told reporters, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.
“We need to push the organization away from its territories,” said Jean Charles Brisard, a terrorism expert, who worked in the French government and now is the chairman for the Center for the Analysis of Terrorism, a Paris-based research group.
Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, is a steadfast ally of Syria’s embattled president, Bashar al-Assad, and recently began an aerial bombing campaign in Syria. The United States and France say the attacks have not been aimed at the Islamic State, as Mr. Putin claims, but at other groups opposing Mr. Assad.
“Most of its resources are from the territory, so we have to push it away from its resources in Syria and Iraq and that means going in on the ground with a regional power,” he said.
The United States currently has soldiers on the ground in Iraq working with Syrian and Iraqi Kurds to dislodge the Islamic State. France has not yet said whether it will adopt a similar course.
On Sunday, Mr. Hollande met his predecessor and rival, Nicolas Sarkozy, at the Élysée Palace. Afterward, Mr. Sarkozy urged decisive action against the Islamic State — a position Mr. Hollande has also taken.
“We need everybody in order to exterminate Daesh,” Mr. Sarkozy told reporters, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.
Mr. Sarkozy, who has been known to be tough on immigrants during his tenure as president, cautioned against linking the refugee crisis with the terrorist attacks, but added: “We need, together, to rein in the wave of migration ensuing from the Syrian situation.”
Mr. Sarkozy, who has been known to be tough on immigrants during his tenure as president, cautioned against linking the refugee crisis with the terrorist attacks, but added: “We need, together, to rein in the wave of migration ensuing from the Syrian situation.”
As President Obama and other leaders of the Group of 20 advanced and emerging economies gathered for a scheduled summit meeting in Antalya, Turkey, on the doorstep of the Syrian crisis, France’s president, François Hollande, stayed behind in Paris, his nation in mourning.
As the investigation proceeded, Mr. Obama told reporters in Turkey that the “skies have been darkened by the horrific attacks” in Paris and pledged that America would support France, its oldest ally. “We stand in solidarity with them in hunting down the perpetrators of this crime and bringing them to justice,” Mr. Obama said after meeting with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, at the start of a 10-day trip that will also take him to the Philippines and Malaysia.
At the same summit meeting, the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, said there was no need for a complete review of the bloc’s refugee policy in response to the terrorist attacks.
“Those who organized, who perpetrated the attacks are the very same people who the refugees are fleeing and not the opposite,” Agence-France Presse quoted Mr. Juncker as saying. “And so there is no need for an overall review of the European policy on refugees.”
Pope Francis on Sunday deplored the terrorist attacks in Paris, which he described as an inconceivable “barbarity” and an “unspeakable affront to human dignity” that “leaves us shocked” and must be condemned.
“The path of violence and hatred does not solve the problems of humanity, and using the name of God to justify this path is blasphemy,” Francis told thousands of pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square for his weekly Angelus address.
“We wonder how the human heart can conceive and carry out such horrific events, which have shaken not only France but the whole world,” Francis said, before asking the faithful present to pray with him for the victims of the attacks.
Security measures at St. Peter’s, already significant, were increased on Sunday. The Italian government on Saturday said it would bolster surveillance of potential terrorist targets.
