Official: Man Behind Paris Attacks Was Planning More Carnage

He reportedly planned to bomb a Paris business district the following week
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Nov 24, 2015 4:00 PM CST
Official: Man Behind Paris Attacks Was Planning More Carnage
   (Uncredited)

The man believed to have planned the Paris attacks that killed 130 people and wounded hundreds more had likely planned to carry out another suicide bombing days later in the French capital's business district. Abdelhamid Abaaoud and an accomplice are believed to have been planning to attack La Defense on Nov. 18 or Nov. 19, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said Tuesday. Abaaoud was killed during a police raid on an apartment in a Paris suburb in the early hours of Nov. 18. Molins said an unidentified third person who died in the raid is believed to have been the accomplice with whom Abaaoud would have carried out an attack on La Defense, the high-rise district that is headquarters to major companies on the western edge of Paris.

The prosecutor said he "can't be and doesn't want to be more precise" on the details suggesting such an attack had been planned. Information obtained on Nov. 19 suggested "that the two attackers—Abaaoud and the man we found by his side in the apartment—were planning an attack consisting of blowing themselves up at La Defense," Molins said. In the hours after the Nov. 13 killings in Paris, Abaaoud is believed to have returned to the sites of at least some of the attacks, including the Bataclan concert hall, even while special police forces were still there. On Tuesday, a judge also handed down terrorism-related charges to Jawad Bendaoud, the only person so far in France known to be facing such charges directly linked to the Nov. 13 attacks. (More Paris terror attacks stories.)

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