CONFIRMED: Paris Attacks Ringleader Killed In Raid

Yesterday afternoon the Washington Post was one of the few major outlets standing by their report that the ringleader in the Paris attacks had been killed in a raid by French police. This morning their report has been confirmed:

The body of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected ringleader of the deadly suicide bombings and shootings that left 129 people dead in Paris last week, has been formally identified. The Paris prosecutor’s office said in brief statement that Abaaoud, who left for Syria in 2014 but was known to have returned to Europe at least once since, was one of two people killed in a ferocious firefight with police at a terrorist hideout north of Paris on Wednesday. The mutilated body of the 27-year-old Belgian extremist, linked with several terrorist attacks in Europe, was found in the rubble of the badly damaged apartment in rue du Corbillon, St-Denis, the prosecutor’s office said, and identified from skin samples.

At least two people – a woman who apparently blew herself up by detonating an explosive vest, and a man hit by multiple gunshots and a grenade – were known to have died in the seven-hour assault on the rundown apartment block. But identification took longer than expected because of the condition of the bodies and the dangerous state of the partly-collapsed building, whose entire third floor caved in during the seven-hour siege, police said. Police sources have confirmed to French media that the dead woman was Abaaoud’s cousin, Hasna Aitboulahcen, a 26-year-old French Moroccan national who had posted a photo on social media in June saying she wanted to go to Syria.