2 dead, 7 arrested in Paris suburb standoff

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(Updated) A seven-hour police raid took place in an apartment near Paris today, targeting the mastermind of last week’s deadly attacks on the French capital.

Seven people were arrested in the raid; two people died, including a woman who set off an explosive. Police are working to verify their identities.

Amateur video captured some of the heavy automatic gunfire that erupted when French forces raided an apartment outside Paris this morning. But as the raid began, a woman in the apartment blew up a suicide vest.

Police ordered residents to stay inside, and neighbors were evacuated and searched.

Officers focused on one apartment that neighbors say is where the raid’s targets were holed up. The main target was Abdelhamid Abaaoud – the man they describe as the mastermind behind the Paris attacks. A Belgian national, he had gone to Syria to join ISIS.

The French prosecutor says the mastermind behind last week’s attacks in Paris was not arrested in overnight raids, but there are reports that he was among those killed by police.

France’s president Francois Hollande says Paris is at war with ISIS. “A police operation that is particularly dangerous and heavy has just ended. It was aimed at neutralizing during this night the terrorists who were accomodated in Saint-Denis and who were in connection with the authors of the attacks and odious crimes of Friday night.”

Hollande added France is sending a warship to the Mediterranean Sea today to step up airstrikes against ISIS.

Additional video: Marvin Ryder of the DeGroote School of Business talks about the economic impact of this latest terror attack:

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