PARIS—French police were on Thursday sifting through the wreckage from a huge raid targeting the suspected mastermind of the Paris attacks as lawmakers prepared to vote on extending a state of emergency.
Investigators have yet to confirm whether the body of Abdelhamid Abaaoud was among the rubble of an apartment block after a seven-hour siege in a northern district of Paris on Wednesday.
At least two were killed in the operation—a woman thought to have blown herself up with a suicide vest and another body found riddled with bullets, according to Paris prosecutor Francois Molins.
Eight people were arrested, but neither Abaaoud, the Belgian suspected of orchestrating the worst ever militant attack on French soil, nor Salah Abdeslam, suspected of taking part with his suicide-bomber brother Brahim, were among those held.
French lawmakers on Thursday were to begin debating whether to extend the state of emergency declared after last week’s attacks to February, and expand it to allow suspects to be placed under house arrest.
As international efforts to fight the Islamic State group that claimed it carried out the attacks in which 129 people died and hundreds were injured, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Russia was open to cooperation against IS in Syria.
“There is an opening, so to speak, with the Russians. We think they are sincere and we must bring together all our forces,” Fabius told France Inter radio.
But the world powers remain divided over the future of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is strongly backed by Russia.
US President Barack Obama reiterated Thursday that Syria’s civil war could not end unless Assad leaves power.
Unconfirmed police sources, cited by France 2 television, said the group targeted in the apartment was a fourth team in addition to the three involved in Friday’s attack.
It may have been planning to strike Charles de Gaulle airport north of Paris and the La Defense business district on the city’s western rime, they said.
Severe damage to the building and the state of the bodies made it impossible to know exactly how many had been killed and who they were, the prosecutor said.
“A new team of terrorists was neutralized and all indications are that given their arms, their organizational structure and their determination, the commando could have struck.”
