French police have issued an arrest warrant for a fugitive terror suspect believed to have been involved in the Paris attacks, which left 132 dead and hundreds more injured.
Forty-two victims remain in intensive care, hospital authorities told AFP.
Police Nationale have issued a wanted poster for Abdeslam Salah, believed to be one of three brothers believed to be involved in the attack. All are French nationals, two of whom lived in the Belgian capital Brussels.
Three terror suspects have now been named: Saleh Abdeslam, who is on the run, his brother Ibrahim Abdeslam, and Omar Ismaïl Mostefai. Mostefai, 29, was one of three men who blew himself up, killing 89 people in the deadliest attack on Friday evening, The Guardian reports.
Six people close to Mostefai are in custody, including his brother, father and sister-in-law. French police yesterday questioned his relatives as the row over Europe’s refugee crisis re-ignited, with conservatives demanding an end to “the days of uncontrolled immigration.”
France remains on the highest security alert after an official day of mourning.
Paris prosecutor Francois Molins told reporters that three jihadist cells staged co-ordinated the hits on Friday night at bars, a concert hall and soccer stadium.
Prosecutors have said the slaughter was claimed by Islamic State as revenge for French military action in Syria and Iraq.
The day ended with two false alarms in central Paris, including one at the Place de la Republique that sparked a crowd of hundreds to flee the square in panic. The false alarm appears to have been caused by firecrackers.
The death toll rose to 132 after a further three people died in hospital from their injuries, medical officials said. The attack left 352 injured, 99 critically.
A stash of weapons were found in a getaway vehicle believed to have been used in the Paris attacks. Detectives found three Kalashnikov rifles along with fingerprints in the abandoned vehicle, discovered in the eastern Parisian suburb of Montreuil. The discovery heightened fears that one or more of the attackers are still on the run.
Greek authorities say a passport found near the body of one of the Stade de France attackers was used by someone in Greece to register as a Syrian refugee. Serbia’s interior ministry said the holder of the passport crossed into Serbia in October before claiming asylum there.
The British Home Secretary Theresa May told BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show that arrangements were in place to provide “military support” in the event of a terrorist attack.
Turkish authorities yesterday said they had foiled a terrorist attack in Istanbul the same day as the deadly attacks in Paris, AFP reports. Five people have been detained in Istanbul, one of them a close associate of the notorious IS militant know as “Jihadi John.” The close associate has been identified as Aine Lesley Davis, a London-born British Muslim who allegedly guarded foreign prisoners in Syria.
Belgian prosecutors said two of the gunmen were French nationals who had been living in Brussels. They also said they had arrested seven people in the Belgian capital. Police staged raids on Saturday in Molenbeek, a poor, immigrant quarter.
In a sign that at least one gunman might have escaped, a source close to the investigation said a Seat car believed to have been used by the attackers had been found in the eastern Paris suburb of Montreuil with three Kalashnikov rifles inside.
A local resident said police had cordoned off the area around the car around midnight and brought in an anti-explosives vehicle in case it was boobytrapped. The car was taken away after the guns had been removed.
One attacker appears to have arrived in Europe alongside Syrian refugees, seeking asylum in Serbia. But with the European Union deeply split over the migrant crisis, European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker stressed the attacker was not a refugee but a criminal.
Museums and theatres remained closed in Paris for a second day yesterday, with hundreds of soldiers and police patrolling the streets and metro stations after French President Francois Hollande declared a state of emergency.
Seven gunmen, all of whom were wearing suicide vests packed with explosives, died in the multiple assaults.
The first to be identified was named as Ismael Omar Mostefai, a 29-year-old who lived in the city of Chartres, southwest of Paris.
French media said he was French-born and of Algerian descent. Molins said the man had a security file for Islamist radicalisation, adding that he had a criminal record but had never spent time in jail. He was identified through tests on his severed finger.
A judicial source said Mostefai’s father and brother had been taken in for questioning, along with others believed to be close to him.
’Paris changes everything’
One of the attackers seems to have followed the route taken by hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers who have crossed by boat from Turkey to the Greek Islands, before heading for EU countries to the north, mainly Germany and Sweden.
The attacks have reignited a row within the EU on how to handle the flood of asylum seekers from Syria and other countries in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
But European Commission President Juncker said EU states should not give in to base reactions: “The one responsible for the attacks in Paris ... he is a criminal and not a refugee and not an asylum seeker.”
Nevertheless, Bavarian allies of German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for a reversal of her “open-door” refugee policy.
“The days of uncontrolled immigration and illegal entry can’t continue just like that. Paris changes everything,” Bavarian finance minister Markus Soeder told Welt am Sonntag newspaper.
In Vienna, Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said his country’s intelligence services had shared information they had which indicated that France, the United States and Iran were among countries being targeted for attack.
Young victims
The names of the first victims have started to filter out on social media, many of them young people who were out enjoying themselves on a Friday night. The dead included one US citizen, one Swede, one Briton, one German, two Belgians, two Romanians and two Mexicans, their governments said.
Members of the U2 rock group laid flowers at a makeshift memorial near the hall, including its singer, anti-poverty campaigner Bono. The Irish band had been due to perform in Paris on Saturday, but cancelled the concert following the attacks.
