The person suspected of organizing of the attacks — a Belgian militant named Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who is 28 or 27 — is believed to be in Syria with fellow Islamic State militants, French and American intelligence officials have concluded.
Early Tuesday morning, 10 French fighter jets, taking off from bases in Jordan and the Persian Gulf, dropped 16 bombs on what the French Defense Ministry described as an Islamic State command center and training center in the group’s self-proclaimed capital of Raqqa, Syria. Hours later, Russia carried out an attack on Raqqa, with cruise missiles and long-range bombers, after acknowledging that a terrorist bomb brought down a Russian jetliner over the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt — a hotbed of Islamic State activity — on Oct. 31.
France, through its defense minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, took the extraordinary step on Tuesday of invoking a European Union treaty that obliges members to help any member that is “the victim of armed aggression on its territory.”
President François Hollande took steps to shore up global support for what he has called a war to annihilate the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. He met with Secretary of State John Kerry, who expressed sympathy but reiterated the Obama administration’s view that the group will not be destroyed until Syria’s embattled president, Bashar al-Assad, leaves power. Mr. Hollande will visit Washington and Moscow next week to meet with Mr. Obama and Mr. Putin. In Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron told Parliament that the Paris attacks had strengthened the case for intervening against the Islamic State in Syria, a move that Parliament rejected in 2013.
On France’s third and final day of national mourning, crowds gathered to light candles and lay flowers at the Place de la République and at makeshift memorials at the sites of the attacks. In the southwestern city of Toulouse, thousands gathered in the city’s central square, waving French flags andsinging “La Marseillaise,” France’s national anthem.
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