Thread: HEAVY GUNFIRE IN PARIS

HEAVY GUNFIRE IN PARIS


Police say raid underway in Paris suburb as witnesses report gunfire

By Jethro Mullen, Ashley Fantz and Catherine E. Shoichet, CNN
Updated 8:15 PM ET, Tue November 17, 2015 | Video Source: CNN

Paris (CNN)Witnesses have reported gunfire amid a police raid in the northern Paris suburb of Saint-Denis as authorities hunt for two suspects from Friday's deadly terrorist attacks who are believed to be at large.

Police blocked off roads early Wednesday in Saint-Denis, which is home to the Stade de France sports stadium where three suicide bombings took place Friday.

CNN affiliate BFMTV reported that police officers have been wounded by gunfire during a raid seeking one of the suspects inthe wave of violence across Paris, which killed at least 129 people and wounded hundreds more.

French police wouldn't comment on whether any officers had been shot in the Saint-Denis operation.

BFMTV reported that the police raid was linked to the hunt for the so-called "ninth suspect," who may appear in a video recorded by a witness to the attacks.

Police have been analyzing the video, which shows two gunmen inside a black car linked to the attacks and perhaps a third individual driving the car, French media reported.

Seven of the attackers were killed during the wave of violence Friday night, and an international arrest warrant is already out for one suspect, Salah Abdeslam, a 26-year-old Frenchman.

The identity of the possible ninth suspect is unknown.

Paris attacks: What you need to know

Brother urges suspect to surrender

Abdeslam's older brother has urged the suspect, who was last seen driving toward the Belgian border hours after the attacks, to turn himself over to authorities.

"I would tell him to surrender. That's the best solution," Mohamed Abdeslam told CNN's Erin Burnett on Tuesday. "But of course, if he has something to do with it, he must accept responsibility."




Mohamed Abdeslam told CNN that before the attacks, he'd noticed his brothers changing and adopting more radical views.

He suspects the Internet could have played a role. But he said his family was shocked by the attack, and had no idea what they were planning.

"My brother who participated in this terrorist act must have been psychologically ready to commit such an act. These are not regular people," he said. "You cannot have the slightest doubt that they have been prepared, that they must not leave any trace which would cause suspicion that they might do such things. And even if you saw them every day, their behavior was quite normal."

Complete coverage of Paris attacks

Suspects questioned by Belgian authorities in February

Police stopped Salah Abdeslam hours after the attacks in a car on his way toward the Belgian border. They let him go because he apparently hadn't yet been linked to the terrorist operation.
Both he and Ibrahim were previously known to authorities:

Belgian prosecutor Eric Van Der Sypt told CNN's Ivan Watson that police questioned the Abdeslam brothers in February.

What we know about the Paris terror attacks suspects 02:33


"Ibrahim tried to go to Syria and was sent back by the Turks in the beginning of 2015," Van Der Sypt said. "It was after that that we questioned him."

Both brothers were released, the federal prosecutor said, after they denied wanting to go to Syria.

He said Belgian authorities were also trying to keep an eye on Bilal Hadfi, one of the suicide bombers who struck outside the Stade de France, according to several sources. "We knew (Hadfi) was in Syria," Van Der Sypt said. "But what we didn't know is apparently he was back, as he blew himself up in Paris.

But we had no knowledge of the fact that he was back in Europe."

Paris victims from all walks of life

'At war' and launching airstrikes

Declaring the country is "at war," French President Francois Hollande has proposed extending the state of emergency for a further three months, along with sweeping new anti-terrorism laws.

Security forces conducted more than 128 new raids around the country overnight, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Tuesday during a radio interview.

Parisians respond to tragedy with silent respect and defiance

Why did ISIS target France? 01:59


Meanwhile, outside the country, French warplanes have launched wave after wave of airstrikes on ISIS' de facto capital of Raqqa in northern Syria, and a major Belgian police operation was conducted Monday in the Abdeslams' home base in Molenbeek, a Brussels suburb with a history of links to Islamist terror plots.

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."

Tracking the suspected mastermind

Before the Paris attacks, France and its allies had tried to target a prominent ISIS member who is believed to have planned the assault on the French capital, a French source close to the investigation said.




Western intelligence agencies had attempted to track Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian citizen thought to be in Syria, but they weren't able to locate him, the source told CNN on Tuesday.

Read more: Who is the suspected ringleader?

Abaaoud had been implicated in the planning of a number of terrorist attacks and conspiracies in Western Europe before the Paris attacks.

Believed to be close to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, he 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.

http://www.foxnews.com/?cmpid=NL_breaking

BREAKING NEWS

WATCH CNNgo: Suspects pinned down in building in Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, Saint-Denis mayor tells CNN affiliate BFM-TV.

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Paris attacks' mastermind Abdelhamid Abaaoud hunted in St-Denis police raid

BREAKING NEWS: 'Heavy gunfire' breaks out as suspected mastermind behind Paris attacks barricades himself in apartment

Heavy shooting broke out during anti-terrorist operation in a Paris suburb

Three suspected terrorists have barricaded themselves in an apartment

Gunfire has been exchanged between the men and dozens of armed police

Reports suggest the target of the police siege in Saint-Denis is Abdelhamid Abaaoud, thought to be the mastermind behind the Paris attacks

Several police have been injured, unconfirmed reports of one fatality

Paris attacks' mastermind Abdelhamid Abaaoud hunted in St-Denis police raid | Daily Mail Online

Two Air France flights diverted because of bomb threats

Flights from Los Angeles and Washington state were ordered to land at Salt Lake City and Canada's east coast respectively

Two Air France flights bound for Paris from the US have been forced to divert after receiving anonymous bomb threats .

One flight from Los Angeles was diverted to Salt Lake City and another which took off from Washington state was forced to land in Halifax on Canada's east coast on Tuesday evening.

No other details have been released on the nature of the threats have been released.

Both planes landed safely in North America and authorities in both the US and Canada have searched the planes with dogs.

One passenger on the flight from Los Angeles, Keith Rosso, described the plane taking "a pretty sharp right" toward Salt Lake City.

He said: "The flight attendants quickly came by and cleared plates, then there was an announcement that we were making an emergency landing..."

In Halifax, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Constable Mark Skinner said there were 262 people on board the Washington plane when it received an anonymous threat.

He said: "We received a complaint of a bomb threat and we responded to it.

"They have to go to through the plane. I don't think there is any timeline on when that plane might get back in the air."

It follows last week's attacks in Paris which killed 129 people and a Russian plane crash in Sinai in Egypt killing 224 people in what is now believed to have been a terror attack.

Two Air France flights diverted because of bomb threats | Europe | News | The Independent

Wed Nov 18, 2015 10:17pm IST

Two die in police raid on group planning new Paris attack

SAINT DENIS, FRANCE | BY ANTONY PAONE AND EMMANUEL JARRY

An armed French CRS policeman secures the scene at the raid zone in Saint-Denis, near Paris, France, November 18, 2015 to catch fugitives from Friday night's deadly attacks in the French capital.
REUTERS/BENOIT TESSIER

A woman suicide bomber blew herself up and another militant died on Wednesday in a police raid that sources said had foiled a jihadi plan to hit Paris's business district, La Defense, days after attacks that killed 129 across the French capital.

Police raided an apartment in the Paris suburb of St. Denis in a hunt for Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian Islamist militant accused of masterminding the bombings and shootings, but more than 12 hours later it was still unclear if they had found him.

A source close to the investigation said the dead woman might have been Abaaoud's cousin. The interior ministry said forensic experts were looking to see whether a third person had died during the pre-dawn raid, indicating the rare violence of the confrontation that shredded the third floor apartment.

Seven people were arrested in the operation, including three who were pulled from the residence in the heart of St. Denis, which had its windows blown out and its facade scarred by bullets and rocket blasts.

"It is impossible to tell you who was arrested. We are in the process of verifying that," Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said at the end of the seven-hour police raid.
GRAPHICS

Islamic State's expanding reach reut.rs/1H8qFng
Paris siege reut.rs/1YghjtR

Molins said the assault was ordered after phone taps and surveillance operations led police to believe that Abaaoud might have been in St. Denis, near to the soccer stadium which was one of the targets last Friday.

Investigators believe the attacks -- the worst atrocity in France since World War Two -- was set in motion from Syria, with Islamist cells in neighbouring Belgium organising the mayhem.

Local residents spoke of their fear and panic as the shooting started in St. Denis just before 4.30 a.m. (0330 GMT).

"We could see bullets flying and laser beams out of the window. There were explosions. You could feel the whole building shake," said Sabrine, a downstairs neighbour from the apartment that was raided.

RELATED COVERAGE

• › France had info suspect Abaaoud might have been at St Denis site - prosecutor
• › Exclusive - Suspects had planned attack on Paris business district - sources

She told Europe 1 radio that she heard the people above her talking to each other, running around and reloading their guns.

Another local, Sanoko Abdulai, said that as the operation gathered pace, a young woman detonated an explosion.
"She had a bomb, that's for sure. The police didn't kill her, she blew herself up...," he told Reuters, without giving details. Three police officers and a passerby were injured in the assault. A police dog was also killed.

FLEEING RAQQA
Islamic State, which controls swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq, has claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks, saying they were in retaliation for French air raids against their positions over the past year.

France has called for a global coalition to defeat the radicals and has launched three air strikes on Raqqa -- the de-facto Islamic State capital in northern Syria -- since the weekend. Russia has also targeted the city in retribution for the downing of a Russian airliner last month that killed 224.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said on Wednesday the bombardments have killed at least 33 Islamic State militants over the past three days.

Citing activists, the Observatory said Islamic State members and dozens of families of senior members had started fleeing Raqqa to relocate to Mosul in neighbouring Iraq.

French prosecutors have identified five of the seven dead assailants from Friday -- four Frenchmen and a man who was fingerprinted in Greece last month after arriving in the country via Turkey with a boatload of refugees fleeing the Syria war.

Police believe two men directly involved in the assault subsequently escaped, including Salah Abdeslam, 26, a Belgian-based Frenchman who is accused of having played a central role in both planning and executing the deadly mission.

French authorities said on Wednesday they had identified all the Nov. 13 victims. They came from 17 different countries, many of them young people out enjoying themselves at bars, restaurants, a concert hall and a soccer stadium.

Empowered by a state of emergency introduced in France last Friday, police here have made hundreds of sweeps across the country over the past three days, arresting 60 suspects, putting 118 under house arrest and seizing 75 weapons.

Until Wednesday morning, officials had said Abaaoud was in Syria. He grew up in Brussels, but media said he moved to Syria in 2014 to fight with Islamic State. Since then he has travelled back to Europe at least once and was involved in a series of planned attacks in Belgium foiled by the police last January.

Two police sources and a source close to the investigation told Reuters that the St. Denis cell was planning a fresh attack. "This new team was planning an attack on La Defense," one source said, referring to a high-rise neighbourhood on the outskirts of Paris that is home to top banks and businesses.

A man in St. Denis told reporters that he had rented out the besieged apartment to two people last week.

RELATED COVERAGE

• › SE Asia faces threat of Islamic State-styled terror attacks
• › From Shanghai to Sydney, tourists think twice about Paris trip

"Someone asked me a favour, I did them a favour. Someone asked me to put two people up for three days and I did them a favour, it's normal. I don't know where they came from I don't know anything," the man told Reuters Television.

He was later arrested by police.

AIRCRAFT CARRIER
Global anxiety was reflected in a flurry of new security alerts on Wednesday after a soccer match between Germany and the Netherlands was cancelled on Tuesday evening in response to what a senior politician called a "concrete indication" of danger.

Sweden raised its threat level by one step to four on a scale of five, the high-speed Eurostar train that connects Paris and London briefly suspended check-in at Paris's Gare du Nord and several German Bundesliga soccer teams said they were beefing up security ahead of their matches.

The Russian air force on Wednesday carried out a "mass strike" on Islamic State positions around Syria, including Raqqa, Russian news agencies reported.

Paris and Moscow are not coordinating their air strikes in Syria, but French President Francois Hollande is due to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Nov. 26 to discuss how their countries' militaries might work together.

Hollande will meet U.S. President Barack Obama, who says Russia must shift its focus from "propping up" Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, two days before that in Washington.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that Western nations had to drop their demands for Assad's exit if they wanted to build a coalition against Islamic State.

Russia is allied to Assad but the West says he must go if there is to be a political solution to Syria's prolonged civil war. Hollande said countries should set aside their sometimes diverging national interests to battle their common foe.

"The international community must rally around that spirit. I know very well that each country doesn't have the same interests," he told an assembly of city mayors on Wednesday.

A French aircraft carrier group was headed to the eastern Mediterranean to intensify the number of strikes in Syria. Russia has said its navy will cooperate with this mission.

http://in.reuters.com/article/2015/1...0T70JB20151118

Paris attacks

Paris attacks: 5,000 rounds fired at police in St-Denis raids, prosecutor says – live





Who are the Paris attack suspects?Jessica Elgot and Jonathan Bucks in London and Alan Yuhas in New York
Wednesday 18 November 2015 13.32 EST

Key events
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• 10m agoParis prosecutor: 5,000 rounds fired at officers in St-Denis raid
• 1h agoExclusive - EU travellers to face stricter checks under French border plan
• 2h agoEagles of Death Metal issues first statement since attack
• 2h agoAbdeslam brothers were interrogated - then released
• 4h agoPraise for police operation 'I want to tell them how proud we are'
• 4h ago'Two deaths, possibly more' in St-Denis raid
• 5h agoWhat we know so far

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13s ago13:32
With that the press conference by Paris prosecutor Francois Molins ends.

• Molins said he could not yet identify the two dead nor the eight people arrested by police after a firefight in St-Denis, pending a forensic investigation.
• The prosecutor could say that neither Abdel-Hamid Abu Oud, the suspected organizer, nor Saleh Abdelsalam, one of Friday’s attackers, are among the arrested people, who number seven men and one woman.
• Terrorists fired more than 5,000 rounds at elite police forces on Wednesday morning, Molins said, repeating that the after five days of investigation police had found “a total war arsenal” of Kalashnikovs, ammunition and explosives.
• The people arrested during the St-Denis raid include two people found in the rubble, four men arrested in the immediate aftermath, and a man and a woman arrested on the street, one believed to have let the militants use the apartment.
• Molins said that police were led to the St-Denis apartment thanks to testimony from someone who said that Abu Oud was on French territory, and that they had surveilled the area thoroughly before launching the raid.

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8m ago13:25
“I cannot give you details about the identities of suspects yet,” Molins says.

There are two people dead but it will take a bit longer to get the additional details, because the building had to be propped up because it was threatening to collapse.
Police found in the rubble of the attack two men, one injured. They were immediately arrested.
Two other people were arrested outside, including person who let the militants use and a woman next to him. The search carried out in the apartment showed no explosive weapon.

Eight people, including one woman, have been arrested in all, he says.
“Abu Oud is not amongst those arrested. Investigations are underway to identify the dead terrorists and those who were arrested, as well as into anyone who is behind these attacks, whether in France or Syria.”

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10m ago13:22

Paris prosecutor: 5,000 rounds fired at officers in St-Denis raid

“The terrorists fired 5,000 rounds,” Molins says of the morning firefight between police and militants in St-Denis.

“The raid managed to arrest three individuals, one wounded in the arm. They’ve been arrested and their identities are being checked. I can’t give you any details about them right now.
“Then there was another explosion by a suicide bomber, and because of the state of the body we haven’t identified this person yet. It leads us to think that the explosion was caused by the woman triggering her explosive vest, but this will have to be checked by forensic examination.”

Updated at 6.23pm GMT
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13m ago13:20
Continuing down the timeline of the investigation, he repeats that police have not yet identified two of the terrorists responsible for Friday’s attacks. He moves on to today’s operation.
“The St-Denis apartment might have been a retrenchment site for Abu Oud,” he says, referring to the alleged mastermind of the attacks. “The investigators were led to this building after being given testimony that Abu Oud was in French territory.”
The testimony was “checked out” rigorously, he says, before police raided the apartment.

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15m ago13:18
Molins says that police found a cellphone in a trash bin behind the Bataclan that had sent the text message “We are off and we’re starting”. Investigators are trying to determine the recipient of the text.
He adds that police have found “a total war arsenal” including “assault rifles of the Kalashnikov model and explosive belts”.

Updated at 6.19pm GMT
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17m ago13:16
“The black Fiat found in Montreuil was used by three men who shot at the terraces of bars and restaurants as can be seen by studying GPS data of the car,” Molins continues.
“We also found three Kalashnikovs and fingerprints of Abdelslam. We also found five cartridges and a knife.”
He repeats that Saleh Abdelslam was stopped by police before his name was well known and allowed to leave, but says that two associates were arrested by Belgian police. He says their role in the attacks or plotting is not yet known.

Updated at 6.17pm GMT
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19m ago13:14
“Investigations which allowed us to establish the significant logistic systems of the terrorists: telephons, weapons and various safehouses,” Molins says.
“Three coordinated units used sophisticated logistics to execute the attacks.”
He says three vehicles rented by the Abdelslam brothers by a Belgian company reached the attack sites “virtually in convoy”.

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21m ago13:12
Paris prosecutor Francois Molins about to speak to the press.
“I’m giving this press conference like last Saturday with the head of the police judiciary. Since last Friday there are 130 policeman from the criminal squad and various people from the intelligence and security departments who have joined forces with the judiciary of Paris. I’d like to praise the police and praise my staff.
“The investigation has progressed well, and the assault last night is proof of this. A terrorist cell was neutralized and seeing their organization and arms, [it’s clear] this cell could have acted.”


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43m ago12:50
Paris prosecutorFrancois Molins is scheduled to give a press conference at 7pm CET (1pm ET), and French officials are suggesting he will give an update on the investigation of the St-Denis apartment.

— Chris Morris (@BBCChrisMorris)November 18, 2015French Interior Minister suggests there might be a third body in the rubble in #SaintDenis - and press conference from prosecutor coming up

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54m ago12:39
Residents in Islamic State’s de facto capital Raqqa are trapped in the Syrian city as the militants attempt to dig in, activists have told Kareem Shaheen in Beirut and Ewen MacAskill in London.
With Raqqa under heavy bombardment and Kurdish and Yazidi forces cutting off a link between the Syrian city and Iraq, Isis militants are trying to consolidate what they can, my colleagues report.

“The people feel that they are in a large prison and that at any moment there could be a battle for Raqqa or preparatory airstrikes where they will be the biggest losers,” said Tim Ramadan, an activist with Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, a campaign group that opposes Isis and the Syrian regime. “People are trying as much as they can to get a permit to leave.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a network with wide contacts inside Syria, said 33 militants died in the three-day raids, which targeted locations inside and around Raqqa. The organisation said families of Isis fighters have attempted to flee the city to Mosul, where the militants also hold sway.
Ramadan said there was no obvious displacement in the city, and that Isis has attempted to portray its recent losses in Sinjar and Aleppo as a tactical withdrawal that will pave the way for a counterattack.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/liv...ds-latest-news

​
118 RAIDS TODAY

• 
• DEVELOPING STORY
  At least 25 people detained, weapons discovered in search for attackers
  
  LATEST New ISIS video threatens New York
  
  VIOLENCE Video captures heavy gunfire
  
  SCENES Photos from the raid
  
  OPINION ISIS is self-destructive -- for a scary reason
  
  WATCH Continuing coverage on CNNgo
  
  

• 
  
• France tried to kill suspected ringleader last month
  
  Government wants more emergency powers
  
  Muslim congressman: This isn't who we are
  
  Attacks: What social media got wrong
  
  ISIS: Soda can bomb took down plane
  
  Christie: Obama 'created refugee crisis'
  
  Obama says he'll veto GOP refugee bill
  
  The name ISIS hates to be called
  
  Hebdo cover:'Screw' the terrorists
  
  For each victim, a story
  
  App shuts down 78 ISIS channels

Suspected mastermind of Paris attacks killed in raid, says France

1 hour ago

PARIS (Reuters) - The suspected Islamic State mastermind of the Paris attacks was among those killed in a police raid north of the capital, France confirmed on Thursday, bringing an end to the hunt for Europe's most wanted man.

Authorities said they had identified the corpse of Belgian national Abdelhamid Abaaoud from fingerprints in the aftermath of Wednesday's raid, in which at least two people died including a female suicide bomber after a gun battle with police.

"It was his body we discovered in the building, riddled with impacts," a statement from the Paris prosecutor said, a day after the pre-dawn raid. The prosecutor later added that it was unclear whether Abaaoud had detonated a suicide belt.

Abaaoud was accused of orchestrating last Friday's coordinated bombings and shootings in the French capital, which killed 129 people. Seven assailants died in the attack and a suspected eighth is still on the run.
View photo
A French policeman and a forensic expert enter a building as they work on the scene in Saint-Denis, near Paris, …

Prime Minister Manuel Valls broke the news of Abaaoud's death in parliament on Thursday to applause from lawmakers who were voting to extend a state of emergency for another three months."We know today ... that the mastermind of the attacks - or one of them, let's remain cautious - was among those dead," Valls told reporters.

Even before last week's attacks, Morroccan-born Abaaoud, 28, was one of Islamic State's highest-profile European recruits, prominently profiled in the group's slick online English-language magazine Dabiq, where he boasted of traveling across European borders staging attacks.

The group, which controls swathes of Iraq and Syria, has attracted thousands of young Europeans, and Abaaoud was seen as a leading figure in attracting others to the movement, particularly from his home country Belgium.

He claimed to have escaped a manhunt after a raid in Belgium in 2013 in which two other militants were killed. His own family has disowned him, accusing him of abducting his 13-year-old brother, who was later promoted on the Internet as Islamic State's youngest foreign fighter in Syria.

Before the attacks, European governments thought Abaaoud was still in Syria. "This is a major failing," said Roland Jaquard at the International Observatory for Terrorism.

While quickly tracking him down will be seen as a major success for French authorities, his presence in Paris will focus more attention on the difficulty European security services have in monitoring the continent's borders.

French officials have called for changes to the functioning of the EU's Schengen zone, which normally does not monitor the entry and exit of citizens of its 26 countries. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have arrived in Europe as refugees in recent months, including someone who used a passport found at the scene of one of Friday's attacks.

FIREFIGHT, EXPLOSIONS
Early on Wednesday, police swooped on the house where Abaaoud was holed up in the Paris suburb of St. Denis. Heavily armed officers stormed the building before dawn, triggering a firefight and multiple explosions.

Officials had said on Wednesday that two people were killed in the raid, including a female suicide bomber who blew herself up. Forensic scientists were trying to determine whether a third person had died. Eight people were arrested.

Two police sources and a source close to the investigation told Reuters the St. Denis cell had been planning a new attack on Paris's La Defense business district. A source close to the investigation said the female bomber who was killed might have been Abaaoud's cousin.

The victims of the deadliest attacks in France since World War Two came from 17 different countries, many of them young people out on a Friday night at bars, restaurants, a concert hall and a soccer stadium.

Islamic State says it carried out the attacks in retaliation for French air raids against its positions over the past year.

France has called for a global coalition to defeat the group and has launched air strikes on Raqqa, the de-facto Islamic State capital in northern Syria, since the weekend. Russia has also targeted the city in retribution for the downing of a Russian airliner last month that killed 224.

The aftermath of the attacks could see common cause between Western capitals and Moscow, more than a year after the United States and European Union imposed financial sanctions on Russia over its annexation of territory from Ukraine.

Russia and the West are divided over Syria, with Moscow supporting President Bashar al-Assad and Western countries saying he must leave power to end a four-year-old civil war.

Moscow launched air strikes in Syria six weeks ago and says it is targeting Islamic State, although most of its strikes have hit areas controlled by other groups opposed to Assad.

There are signs however that the recognition of a common threat since the Paris shootings and the Russian air crash could prompt more efforts to cooperate.

European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker wrote to President Vladimir Putin this week, suggesting closer trade ties between the 28-nation EU and a Russian-led economic bloc, linking them to progress on implementing a ceasefire in Ukraine.

In the letter, seen by Reuters, Juncker underlined the importance of good relations between the European Union and Moscow, "which to my regret have not been able to develop over the past year". He said he had asked Commission officials to study options for closer ties between the EU and the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union of former Soviet states.
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius said he was surprised by the letter, which he said did not reflect a common view of EU member states and made no reference to EU sanctions.

INTERNATIONAL COORDINATION
Paris and Moscow are not coordinating their air strikes in Syria, but French President Francois Hollande is due to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Nov. 26 to discuss how their countries' militaries might work together.

Two days before that, Hollande will meet U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington to discuss the role of a U.S.-led coalition in any unified effort against Islamic State.

France is one of several European countries participating in the U.S.-led coalition's strikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq, and two months ago became the only European country to join strikes in Syria as well.

Obama on Thursday reiterated the U.S. position that eradicating the group was tied up with ending the civil war in Syria, which could not happen as long as Assad was in power.
"Bottom line is, I do not foresee a situation in which we can end the civil war in Syria while Assad remains in power," he told reporters in Manila on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.


http://news.yahoo.com/least-two-die-police-raid-group-planning-paris-011939001--finance.html