Terror in ParisBody of Paris attacks' mastermind identified

Here the last twenty-four hours’ major developments in the case:

• The French prosecution has just announced that forensic evidence confirms that Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the 27-year old Belgian who was the mastermind of Friday’s attacks in Paris, was killed in Wednesday’s police raid on an apartment building in St.-Dennis. Abaaud’s 26-year old cousin killed herself by exploding a suicide vest, and the police now say that there may be a third body under the rubble of the partially collapsed third floor of building.
• Belgia’s prime minister, Charles Michel, on Thursday announced a series of anti-terror measures, pledged €400m in extra funding to combat extremism. Michel pledged to use changes to the constitution to extend preventive detention times for suspects from 24 hours to 72 hours. He also affirmed that Belgium would move forward alone on a system of airline passenger information sharing that European Union nations have been incapable of agreeing in four years.
  “All democratic forces have to work together to strengthen our security,” Michel told lawmakers.
• Belgian police raided six addresses in the Brussels region linked to Bilal Hadfi, one of three suicide bombers who blew themselves up outside the Stade de France. The Belgian prosecutor office told Al Jazeera that raids focused on people linked to Hadfi, a 20-year-old French national who was living in Belgium and who, as was the case with all the suicide bombers identified so far, had spent time in Syria. One arrest was also made in the Brussels suburb of Laeken in connection with the Paris attacks.
• The French prime minister, Manual Valls, warned that ISIS jihadis might use chemical or biological weapons. “Terrorism hit France not because of what it is doing in Iraq and Syria … but for what it is”, Valls told parliament during the debate, adding: “We know that there could also be a risk of chemical or biological weapons.”
• French prosecutors have identified five of the seven attackers who died: four Frenchmen and a foreigner who was fingerprinted in Greece last month and later claimed asylum in Serbia. He was carrying a fake Syrian passport in the name of Ahmad Almohammad.
• Police are still searching for the eighth gunmen, 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam, whose brother Brahim blew himself up in the attacks.
• Two suspected accomplices identified as Mohammed Amri, 27, and Hamza Attou, 21, who allegedly drove Salah Abdeslam back from Paris to the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek are being questioned by police in Belgium.
• French police have so far made 60 arrests and seized 75 weapons after 414 raids across the country.
• French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, speaking on France-Inter radio Thursday, said that ISIS “is a monster. But if all the countries in the world aren’t capable of fighting against 30,000 people (ISIS members), it’s incomprehensible.”