Paris – Moroccan security officials provided information that helped their French counterparts launch raids in the Paris suburb of St.Denis on Wednesday, a Moroccan source said.
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“We exchanged information. Morocco gave information this morning with regard to the events that unfolded this morning,” the source said, referring to the St.Denis raid.
At least two people holed up in a flat in the Paris suburb of St.Denis were killed and seven arrested during the police raid this morning.
A French police source said four representatives of Moroccan security services were in Paris on Tuesday to meet the heads of judicial police.
Three sources told Reuters the raid stopped a jihadist cell that had been planning an attack on Paris’s business district, La Defense, after coordinated bombings and shootings killed 129 across the city.
Officials said police had been hunting Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian Islamist militant accused of masterminding the Nov. 13 carnage, but more than nine hours after the launch of the pre-dawn raid it was still unclear if they had found him.
Seven people were arrested in the operation, which started with a barrage of gunfire, including three people who were pulled from the apartment, officials said.
“It is impossible to tell you who was arrested. We are in the process of verifying that. Everything will be done to determine who is who,” Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said at the end of the operation.
Molins said the assault was ordered after phone taps and surveillance operations led police to believe that Abaaoud might have been in St. Denis, near to the soccer stadium which was site of one of the attacks that hit Paris last week.
Investigators believe the attacks — the worst atrocity in France since World War Two — was set in motion from Syria, with Islamist cells in neighboring Belgium organizing the mayhem.