Over 100 French officers carried out a police raid at an apartment in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis Wednesday morning, an operation that led to the deaths of two terrorist suspects and the arrest of seven others.
CNN reported that the raid, which targeted the top suspect in Friday’s Paris attacks, Belgian terrorist Abdelhamid Abaaoud, possibly foiled further attacks in France, according to French officials.
Authorities have not yet said whether Abaaoud, an Islamic State member suspected of organizing the attacks last week that killed and wounded hundreds, was among those killed or detained in the raid.
"A lot of work was done as part of this investigation, which made it possible to obtain, through phone records, surveillances and testimony, elements that could have suggested that the man named Abaaoud was potentially in an apartment used for plotting in St.-Denis," Paris prosecutor Francois Molins stated, according to the New York Times.
The raid, which took place over seven hours Wednesday, involved 110 police officers and centered on an apartment building near the Stade de France, outside which terrorists carried out several suicide bombings Friday.
According to police sources, the suspected terrorists found as a result of the raid were "about to move on some kind of operation."
One of the terror suspects killed was a young woman who detonated a suicide vest after opening fire on police, and the other--described by Molins as "another terrorist"--died in a clash with police.
Five French officers were wounded, non-fatally, in the raid and a police dog was killed.
French President François Hollande said that the raid Wednesday furthered proved that "we are at war" with the Islamic State.
UPDATE 5:02 P.M.: Two European officials said Wednesday that the suspected organizer of the Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was killed in the police raid earlier that day.