Paris Terror attack: French Police achieve breakthrough, identify first terrorist from a severed finger

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French Police take cover outside the the Bataclan theater in Paris
French Police take cover outside the the Bataclan theater in Paris

The French authorities investigating the November 13 / 11 terror attacks in Paris have achieved a breakthrough; they have named the first attacker, 29-year-old Omar Ismail Mostefai, who was identified from a severed finger found at Bataclan concert hall, the scene of the bloodshed.

ISIS  jihadists said, they were behind the gun and suicide attacks that left a trail of destruction at a sold-out concert hall, at restaurants and bars, and outside France’s Stade de France national stadium.

Reacting to the attack, President Francois Hollande called the coordinated assault  an “act of war,” as the capital’s normally bustling streets fell eerily quiet, 10 months after the attacks on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, that shocked the nation.

Meanwhile, the investigation widened across Europe, with Belgian Police arresting several suspects, and German authorities probing a possible link to a man recently found with a car full of explosives.

The discovery of a Syrian passport near the body of one attacker raised suspicions about how some of the assailants might have entered Europe as part of an influx of people fleeing Syria’s civil war.

“We confirm that the (Syrian) passport holder came through the Greek island of Leros on October 3, where he was registered under EU rules,” said the Greek minister for citizen protection, Nikos Toskas.

It is now being learnt that one of the attackers apparently wanted to blow himself up inside the Stade de France, where the home team was playing a friendly international football match against Germany, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

A security guard at the stadium, and the French police confirmed the sequence, saying that a man, while being frisked at the entry into the 80,000-capacity stadium, was found to be wearing an explosives vest.

Fearing that he might get caught, the attacker, revealed the security guard named Zouheir, detonated the vest – the report in WSJ read. Zouheir was on duty close to the players’ tunnel and was intimated about the incident by the security team at stadium’s entry.

 

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