PARIS, Nov 15: French police have identified the first of seven gunmen who killed at least 129 people in a wave of carnage claimed by the Islamic State group, as international investigators stepped up their probes into Paris’s worst ever attacks.
French authorities yesterday named the first attacker as 29-year-old Omar Ismail Mostefai, who was identified from a severed finger found at Bataclan concert hall, scene of the worst of the bloodshed.
IS 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.
President Francois Hollande called the coordinated assault on Friday night an “act of war” as the capital’s normally bustling streets fell eerily quiet, 10 months after attacks on magazine Charlie Hebdo 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 of explosives.
The discovery of a Syrian passport near the body of one attacker has raised suspicions 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.
The attacks sent shockwaves around the world, with London’s Tower Bridge, Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate and the World Trade Center in New York among the many landmarks lit up in the red, white and blue of the French national flag in a show of solidarity.
The attacks, which killed 129 people and wounded 352, including 99 critically, were the first ever suicide bombings on French soil. Unlike those in January, none of the assailants had ever been jailed for terror offences.
Mostefai, born in the poor Paris suburb of Courcouronnes as one of four brothers and two sisters, had eight convictions for petty crimes but had never been imprisoned. Prints found on a finger in the Bataclan matched those in police files.
Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said he had came to the authorities’ attention in 2010 as having been radicalised but had “never been implicated in a terrorist network or plot”.
“It’s a crazy thing, it’s madness,” his brother told reporters, his voice trembling, before he was taken into custody along with his father last night.
“Yesterday I was in Paris and I saw what a mess this was.”
In a statement posted online yesterday, IS claimed responsibility for the attacks and referred to French air strikes on IS in Syria.
The group, which has sown mayhem in large swathes of Syria and Iraq, threatened further attacks in France “as long as it continues its Crusader campaign.”
Meanwhile, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said today that 103 bodies had been identified from attacks in Paris, with 20 to 30 more still awaiting identification.
“They will be (identified) in the coming hours,” said Valls outside the Ecole Militaire where a centre has been set up for the victims’ families.
At least 129 people were killed, according to the latest official toll.
“These are not anonymous victims. They are lives, young people, who have been targeted while they spent a quiet evening in a cafe, or at a concert,” Valls told reporters.
“No psychologist, no volunteer, no doctor can console them,” he said of the grieving families.
“But we must help them with the process, with identifications, to accompany them… Through all the administrative tasks.”
Meanwhile, several AK47 rifles of the sort used during the attacks in Paris were found in the black Seat abandoned in an eastern suburb of the capital, a judicial source said today.
Witnesses have said the car, found in Montreuil, was used by attackers at multiple locations on Friday night.
One or more attackers also raked the terrace of a pizzeria with gunfire, with a witness saying he saw shots fired from a black car.
Automatic gunfire was also used against another restaurant and a bar. Witnesses said the attackers pulled up in a black Seat Leon car.
The suicide vests used by Friday’s attackers in Paris — a first in France — were made by a highly skilled professional who could still be at large in Europe, intelligence and security experts say.
All seven of the militants wore identical explosive vests and did not hesitate to blow themselves up — a worrying change of tactic for jihadists targeting France.
Unlike the attacks in London in 2005 where the bombers’ explosives were stored in backpacks, Friday’s attackers used the sort of suicide vests normally associated with bombings in the Middle East.
“Suicide vests require a munitions specialist. To make a reliable and effective explosive is not something anyone can do,” a former French intelligence chief told media persons, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“A munitions specialist is someone who is used to handling explosives, who knows how to make them, to arrange them in a way that the belt or vest is not so unwieldy that the person can’t move,” he added.
“And it must also not blow up by accident.”
French authorities say the vests appeared to have been made with TATP, or acetone peroxyde, that is easy for amateurs to make at home but is highly unstable.
The vests also included a battery, a detonation button and shrapnel to maximise injuries.
“They didn’t bring these vests from Syria: the more you shake these things, the more you multiply the risks,” said the former intelligence chief.
“It’s very likely he is here, in France or Europe, one or several guys who have come back from jihadist areas and who learned over there.”
Three specialists contacted by reporters said it was probable the vests were made by someone outside the group that carried out the attacks.
“The explosive specialist is too precious. He never participates in attacks,” said Alain Chouet, a former director at France’s DGSE external intelligence agency.
“So he’s around, somewhere.”
“The bomb-maker is not cannon fodder,” added Pierre Martinet, another former DGSE official who now works in corporate security.
“He’s there to make more suicide vests and allow other guys to carry out actions.”
Making a vest is extremely complicated.
“It can’t be done in a couple of days,” said the former intelligence chief. “It takes weeks of training, and you have to work under the watch of a ‘master’. It’s meticulous work.”
On the eve of the UN global climate conference in the northern suburbs of Paris later this month, followed by New Year’s celebrations and next year’s Euro 2016 football championships, concerns are high.
“It’s extremely worrying,” said the retired intelligence chief who asked not to be named. “Every service is on tenterhooks.”
Several foreigners have been identified among the victims of Friday’s deadly terrorist attacks in Paris, which left at least 129 dead and more than 350 injured:
According to a tally from various official sources around the world, at least 23 foreigners lost their lives in the attacks.
French officials have warned that the toll is likely to rise with several hundred also hurt, dozens seriously.
Here is a breakdown of the victims by country:
– ALGERIA: Two Algerians were killed, the reporters said, citing diplomatic sources as saying the victims were a woman aged 40 and a man aged 29.
– BELGIUM: At least three Belgians including a dual French national were killed, according to the Belgian foreign ministry. Press reports said they included Elif Dogan, 26, and Milko Jozic, 47, who had been living in Paris for four months. The third victim was reported to be 28 and also have French dual nationality.
– BRITAIN: Nick Alexander, 36, was killed at the Bataclan concert hall, his family said. British media reports said he sold merchandise for the Eagles of Death Metal band that was playing at the time of the attack. The Foreign Office said a “handful” of other Britons were feared dead.
– CHILE: Three Chileans were killed in the attacks. Patricia San Martin, 55, the niece of Chile’s ambassador to Mexico and her daughter Elsa Delplace. The third victim was Luis Felipe Zschoche Valle, a musician, Chile’s foreign ministry said.
– GERMANY: Germany’s foreign ministry said one of its citizens was killed, without giving further details.
– MEXICO: Two Mexicans were killed, one with dual Spanish nationality, the foreign ministry said.
– MOROCCO: One Moroccan was killed and another injured, according to the embassy in France.
– PORTUGAL: Two Portuguese nationals are reported to have died, according to the Lisbon government. One of them, Manuel Dias, 63, was a driver and had just dropped off three passengers near the Stade de France, where he was killed.
The other, Precilia Correia, 35, worked at the FNAC in Paris and was killed at the Bataclan, where she had gone with her French boyfriend, who also killed. Born in France to a Portuguese father and French mother, she had dual nationality.
– ROMANIA: Two Romanians were killed, according to the foreign ministry in Bucharest, giving only first the names of the victims: Ciprian, 32, and Lacramioara, 29. They were celebrating a birthday party at the Belle Equipe bistro and had an 18-month-old child.
– SPAIN: Spanish authorities said 29-year-old Juan Alberto Gonzalez Garrido was killed while attending the concert at the Bataclan theatre. Spanish press reports said Jorge Alonso de Celada was killed at a restaurant and Alberto Pardo Touceda died in the concert attack.
– SWEDEN: One person of Swedish nationality was wounded by gunfire and another was killed, according to the foreign ministry, which said it was still verifying the information.
– TUNISIA: Two young Tunisian sisters who lived in the French region of Creusot were killed while celebrating a friend’s birthday in Paris, according to the Tunisian foreign ministry.
– UNITED STATES: California State University student Nohemi Gonzalez, 23, was killed in the attacks, the university said. She had been studying industrial design.
Other US citizens and a Swiss woman are reported to be injured, while two Brazilians were wounded in the attacks, President Dilma Rousseff said. (AGENCIES)
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