The French police has identified the first of seven gunmen who killed at least 129 people in a carnage claimed by the Islamic State (ISIS) group, even as the probe widened across Europe, with the Belgian police arresting seven suspects and confirming that two assailants who died in the Paris attacks were Frenchmen who had lived in Brussels, Greek authorities admitting that the militant with the Syrian passport came through the Greek island of leros and German authorities probing a possible link to a man recently found with a car full of explosives.
With 3,000 extra troops being mobilised to protect Paris and famous tourist sites being shuttered down in one of the most visited cities on Earth, French authorities laboured on Sunday to identify assailants, their accomplices even as they carried out the unenviable task of identifying the bodies of the victims.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Sunday 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.
Meanwhile, French authorities on Sunday 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. Six people close to Mostefai, have been detained, including his father, brother and sister-in-law, judicial and police sources said.
The investigation widened across Europe on Sunday. The Belgian authorities are holding seven people for questioning in connection with the attacks, and investigators have found that two of the cars used in the operation were rented in Belgium.
“It appears that two French nationals, who lived in Brussels..., were identified as among the attackers who died on the spot,” the federal prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
“In addition, two cars registered in Belgium were found in Paris, one near the Bataclan and the other near Pere lachaise,” the statement said.
In Germany, the authorities said they were looking into a possible link between the attacks and the arrest in Bavaria last week of a man with a car-load of weapons and explosives.
The Paris attacks were “prepared, organised and planned overseas, with help from inside (France),” Hollande had said on Saturday. Meanwhile, a black Seat car with several AK47 rifles of the sort used during the attacks by gunmen who fired at people in restaurants on Friday has been found in the eastern suburb of Montreuil, police said. Some 19 people were killed, with a witness saying the assailants fired from the back of a black Seat.
Automatic gunfire was also used at the concert hall, another restaurant and a bar. Witnesses said the attackers pulled up in a black Seat leon car.
Earlier, the discovery of a Syrian passport near the body of one attacker has raised suspicions that some of the assailants might have entered Europe as part of an influx of people fleeing Syria’s civil war, a fear which was confirmed on Sunday.
“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 clear now that together with the victims of Islamo-fascism in the Middle East that come as refugees, extreme elements are crossing into Europe,” Defence Minister Panos Kammenos said after an emergency meeting with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.
The attacks have 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.
US President Barack Obama described the onslaught as “an attack on all of humanity” and an emotional Pope Francis said he was “shaken” by the “inhuman” attacks.
British Prime Minister David Cameron said the attacks “suggest a new degree of planning and coordination and a greater ambition for mass casualty attacks”.
The attacks, which killed 129 people and wounded 352, including 99 critically, were the first-ever suicide bombings on French soil. Unlike those involved in the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo in January, none of the assailants had ever been jailed for terror offences.
Mostefai, born in the poor Paris suburb of Courcouronnes 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 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 AFP, his voice trembling, before he was taken into custody along with his father on Saturday night.
“Yesterday I was in Paris and I saw what a mess this was,” he said.
A total of 89 people were killed at the Bataclan by the armed men who burst in shouting “Allahu akbar” (God is greatest) before gunning down concert-goers and executing hostages.
The jehadists were heard raging at the French President and his decision in September to join US-led air strikes on ISIS targets in Syria.
Analysts at Eurasia Group said the attacks “confirm a structural shift in the modus operandi of the ISIS, and represent a prelude to additional attacks in the West.”
Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said three groups of attackers, including seven suicide bombers wearing identical vests containing the explosive TATP, carried out the attacks.
The militants did not hesitate to blow themselves up, a worrying change of tactic for jehadists 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 AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.