The mastermind behind last week's Paris attacks has been killed after an extensive stand-off with French police and military forces.
Abdelhamid Abaaoud, 27, has been linked to other planned attacks that were compromised going all the way back to spring of this year. He is thought to be responsible for the attempted train attack that was foiled by three Americans back in August.
Late Tuesday night, French police and military forces had gathered around a small apartment in Saint-Denis, a small suburb outside of France. After several hours of attempting to get Abaaoud out of the apartment, French officials say that a woman inside the apartment detonated a suicide bomb which killed him.The body of the terrorist was so badly destroyed that it took French officials several hours to correctly gain identification.
During the raid, according to one police official, an officer approached Abaaoud's cousin, Hasna Aitboulahcen, and asked her, "Where is your boyfriend?" She responded angrily: "He's not my boyfriend!" Then there was an explosion. The bodies recovered in the raid were badly mangled, with a part of the woman's spine landing on a police car, complicating formal identification. Her possible role in the Paris massacre was unclear.
Shots and explosions from the raid could be heard all throughout the streets of Paris as officials bombarded the apartment with continuous gunfire.
