(PARIS) — French authorities have identified the woman who blew herself up with a suicide bomb during a police raid in Paris Wednesday as Hasna Ait Boulahcen, a cousin of the Paris attacks purported ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud, according to two senior French officials.
Abaaoud was also killed in the dramatic raid in the neighborhood of Saint-Denis north of Paris’ city center. French authorities said that nearly 5,000 bullets were fired in the raid and that police were temporarily stymied by a reinforced door that blocked their entry to an apartment holding the perpetrators. Speaking to Le Parisien, the head of France’s elite police unit RAID said the delay cost them the element of surprise and the operation turned into a lengthy firefight against “real professionals.”
It didn’t end for about an hour, when a woman, now identified as Boulahcen, apparently blew herself up nearly taking down part of the building, officials said.
On Thursday, authorities confirmed Abaaoud was among the dead, ending one of multiple urgent manhunts. French authorities identified Abaaoud as the ringleader of the killers who attacked six separate Paris locations last Friday, taking more than 120 lives. Abaaoud is believed to have been involved in at least four other terror plots and was almost arrested in January, but managed to escape to Syria.
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