Paris Attacks Ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud Confirmed Dead

The ringleader in last week's bloody terrorist attacks in Paris died in a pre-dawn raid Wednesday on an apartment building north of the French capital, the Paris prosecutor's office announced Thursday. Authorities zeroed in on a building in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis after picking up phone conversations indicating that a relative of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who authorities believe coordinated the shootings and bombings that killed 129 people, may have been there, a Belgian counterterrorism official said.
French police believed Abaaoud himself was then still in the country, though they didn't know exactly where. Some residents in Saint-Denis told CNN that they had seen Abaaoud recently in the neighborhood and at a local mosque. It turns out Abaaoud was in that building in Saint- Denis. And after a violent firefight that included explosions and gunfire, he was dead. In a statement released Thursday, the Paris prosecutor's office said that Abaaoud's body was found in the Saint-Denis building riddled with bullets. The office said that he was positively identified using papillary prints, which include patterns on fingers, palms and the soles of the feet.