French security forces have conducted dozens more raids around the country as at least two men linked to the deadly Paris terrorist attacks, including the suspected mastermind, remain at large.
More than 128 new raids were carried out overnight, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Tuesday during a radio interview.
France has been under a state of emergency since Friday night’s deadly rampage by ISIS attackers armed with assault rifles and suicide vests killed at least 129 people and wounded hundreds more.
Declaring the country to be “at war,” President Francois Hollande proposed extending the state of emergency for a further three months along with sweeping new anti-terrorism laws.
French warplanes have launched wave after wave of airstrikes on ISIS’ de facto capital of Raqqa in northern Syria in recent days, the latest taking place early Tuesday.
Suspected mastermind
But beyond the military moves, international efforts to track down surviving suspects tied directly to the brutal Paris attacks have so far struggled.
A major Belgian police operation Monday in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek, an area with a history of links to Islamist terror plots, failed to yield any arrests.
Officials have suggested Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian ISIS operative originally from Molenbeek, was the mastermind of the Paris attacks.
Abaaoud, who is believed to be close to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was linked to a plan to attack Belgian police that was thwarted in January. He has since been featured in ISIS’ online English-language magazine. His current whereabouts are unknown.
Attack suspect on the loose
Another Paris suspect with ties to Molenbeek is Salah Abdeslam, a 26-year-old French citizen for whom an international arrest warrant has been issued.
He is reported to have rented the car that was found outside the Bataclan concert hall where three other attackers massacred 89 people.
Police stopped him hours after the attacks in a car on his way toward the Belgian border but let him go because he apparently hadn’t yet been linked to the terrorist operation.
Abdeslam, whose older brother was one of the Paris suicide bombers, is believed to be a longstanding associate of Abaaoud, with both men previously involved in gangs in Molenbeek carrying out robberies and other petty crime.
Syrian links
Belgian authorities say two men detained over the weekend in Molenbeek in connection with the attacks are now under arrest for “attempted terrorism and participation in the activities of a terrorist group.” Their identities haven’t been disclosed.
French officials have identified some of the dead Paris attackers, but two of them are still unknown and questions remain about the Syrian passport another of them was believed to have used to enter Europe along a route used by refugees and migrants.
French officials believe that six of the people directly involved in the attacks had spent time in Syria, CNN affiliate BFMTV reported Monday.
None of the individuals identified so far in the Paris attacks have been on any U.S. watch-lists, multiple U.S. officials told CNN, raising questions about how effectively the U.S. and its allies are able to track foreign fighters traveling to Syria and Iraq.
City on edge
On Monday, Parisians returned to school and work in a city scarred by its second major terror attack this year. In January, terrorists skilled 17 people in a series of attacks that included the storming of the offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.
At one intersection, police who arrived to direct traffic Monday were met by worried pedestrians asking, “Is anything happening?”
At a Paris school, a father said, “It’s difficult to let them go off to school and for us to return to work, for everyone. We’re all just going to have to look out for one another.”