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A female terrorist wearing a suicide vest has blown herself up and another jihadi is dead as more than 100 police and soldiers were today involved in a gunfight with up to six suspected Paris terrorists including the mastermind behind Friday’s massacres.
SWAT teams and special forces have surrounded an apartment in the Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis – close to the Stade de France – in a siege that started at 4.30am this morning.
French media are reporting the architect of the plan that killed 129 people, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, 27, is alive and inside the flat – until now it was thought he was in Syria orchestrating the Paris attacks from ISIS capital Raqqa.
A woman who may be Abaaoud’s jihadi bride is said to have fired her AK-47 at police before blowing herself up as an assault squad stormed the apartment block. Survivors of the Bataclan massacre where 89 people died insisted there was a female shooter.
As she tried to kill police this morning a rooftop sniper shot dead another terror suspect through a window. Police have confirmed that three people in the apartment were taken alive and arrested while two others were held ‘nearby’ with security forces still trying to ‘neutralise’ more holed-up in the flat.
An innocent person on the street may have been killed in the crossfire and at least five police have been injured in the ferocious gunfight. The terrorists also shot and killed a police dog.
One of the nine suspected massacre shooters Salah Abdeslam, 26, who has been subject to an international manhunt focussed on Belgium, may also be inside.
Teams of armed police appeared on a street outside the Saint-Denis flat before dawn today and then at least three trucks of soldiers and special forces arrived as back up.
Witnesses told MailOnline there have been periods of intense machine gun fire and at least seven large explosions, caused by the suicide bomber and possibly hand grenades, as the siege continues. There are no hostages involved.
President Francois Hollande was this morning holding an emergency meeting at the Elysee Palace to monitor the raid.
Prime minister Manuel Valls, interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve, defence minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, foreign minister Laurent Fabius and justice minister Christiane Taubira were also in the meeting.
One of the arrested suspects is the man who appears to have rented the flat to the terror cell.
The unnamed suspect, 30, admitted in an interview near the under siege apartment on Rue de Corbillon he handed it over to two men ‘who came from Belgium’ two days ago.
He said: ‘A friend of mine asked me to host two of his buddies for a few days.
‘I said there was no mattress, they told me “it’s okay”, they just wanted water and to pray. My friend said they were from Belgium.
‘I was asked to a favour and I said yes. I was not aware that it was terrorists’ – moments later police grabbed him and put him in handcuffs. A female friend of his who was also held said she stayed there last week and described it as a ‘squat’ and said the Belgian men arrived on Monday.
A woman living below the under-siege flat with her young baby described being ‘woken up by an explosion’.
She told French broadcaster BMFTV: ‘I awoke to an explosion. After that I heard gun shots and there was lots of shooting. The terrorists were fighting at the police and the police were firing back.
There were shots, explosions. We didn’t know where to go. My son and I were in panic. There was dust falling from the ceiling because of the explosions. I kept shouting ‘If you’re from the police, please help me. I’m here with my baby. But they kept shooting and shooting’.
Benson Hoi, 29, a software engineer, lives just 100 metres away from the apartment which is under siege and was woken up by the sound of gunfire at around 4am this morning.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3323196/Shooting-breaks-Paris-suburb-anti-terrorist-operation.html#ixzz3rpswMQBz
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