The suspected ringleader of the Paris terrorist attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was killed in a police raid on Wednesday, the prosecutor's office said Thursday, NBC News reported.
The 27-year-old Belgian jihadist, who was also linked to two other terror plots and once boasted about avoiding capture by Western intelligence agencies, died during the operation in Saint-Denis. He was identified by his fingerprints. Officials said his body was bullet-ridden.
He died along with a woman who blew herself up with a suicide belt, and another man, when elite police forces stormed the scene. Eight other people were arrested.
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Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve later said that Abaaoud was involved in four of the six attacks foiled by French intelligence agents since this spring.
A source close to the investigation told Reuters that the dead female bomber killed might have been Abaaoud's cousin. NBC News was unable to independently verify that report.
