Paris attacks: Mastermind believed killed in police raid

French police staged a lengthy gunfight in a northern Parisian suburb in their hunt for the presumed mastermind behind the weekend’s terrorist attacks that left 129 people dead and hundreds injured.

The early morning raid, which ended just before midday local time, was staged to capture leading suspect Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who was thought to be in a Saint-Denis apartment building.

The occupants of the "safe house" were heavily armed and it's believed the apartment, near to the Stade de France and in an immigrant district, was the base for planning the attacks.

But at the conclusion, police were unable to confirm the identities of the two people who were killed and the six men and one woman detained for questioning.

One of the dead is a woman, Hasna Aitboulahcen, 26, identified as Abaaoud’s cousin, who detonated a suicide vest as police flung grenades and exchanged volleys of automatic gunfire.

The Washington Post, quoting two senior intelligence officials, says the dead man is Abaaoud, who was last monitored in Syria earlier this year.

Police say they are also looking for a second suspect, Salah Abdeslam, as having taken part in the attacks.

They now believe a third person had been in a car with Belgium-based Abdeslam and his brother, Brahim Abdeslam, who blew himself up near a restaurant in eastern Paris on Friday night.

This suggests the total attack group comprised at least nine people, including seven suicide bombers, and that others may be involved.

It's also been reported the Abdeslam brothers sold the bar they owned in Brussels on September 20, six weeks ago, and it was shut down shortly afterward over concern it sold drugs.

Police in France have conducted more than 400 raids in the past five days and arrested dozens in connection with the attacks.

The country is in a state of emergency, giving powers to police to arrest and detain people without charges being made.

Meanwhile, US intelligence agencies now believe senior Islamic State militants in Syria or Iraq had encouraged their supporters in Europe to conduct attacks in France and had contact with some of the Paris attackers ahead of last Friday’s operation.

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