PARIS — The man believed to have planned the Nov. 13 Paris attacks that killed 130 people and wounded hundreds more likely planned to carry out another suicide bombing days later in the French capital’s business district, the Paris prosecutor said Tuesday.
Abdelhamid Abaaoud and an accomplice are believed to have been planning to attack La Defense on Nov. 18 or 19, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said.
Abaaoud was among three people killed during a police raid on an apartment in a northern Paris suburb in the early hours of Nov. 18. His female cousin, Hasna Ait Boulahcen, died of asphyxia apparently from the explosive vest detonated by a third person, who hasn’t been identified.
Molins said the unidentified third person is believed to have been the accomplice with whom Abaaoud would have carried out an attack on La Defense, the high-rise district that is headquarters to major companies.
The prosecutor wouldn’t elaborate on the details but suggested such an attack had been planned. Information obtained Nov. 19 suggested “that the two attackers — Abaaoud and the man we found by his side in the apartment — were planning an attack consisting of blowing themselves up at La Defense either on Wednesday the 18th or Thursday the 19th,” Molins said.
The Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, claimed by the Islamic State, targeted people enjoying a Friday night out at a packed concert hall, a restaurant terrace, a cafe and a friendly soccer match between France and Germany. In the hours after the killings, Abaaoud is believed to have returned to the sites of some of the attacks, including the Bataclan concert hall, even while special police forces were still there.
Meanwhile, French President François Hollande visited Washington for talks with President Barack Obama as part of a push for the international community to bolster the campaign against Islamic State extremists.
Speaking at a joint news conference, Obama said the Islamic State, which he described as a “barbaric terrorist group,” cannot be tolerated and must be destroyed.
