Prime Minister Manuel Valls has said that French police have identified the third attacker in the Bataclan concert hall massacre where ninety people were killed in last month’s attacks. Reports have named French national Foued Mohamed-Aggad, 23, from Strasbourg as the third attacker.
Mohamed-Aggad reportedly travelled to Syria in late 2013 as part of a group of radicalized youth from Strasbourg that included his brother. Several of the group were arrested upon returning to France in spring last year. Mohamed-Aggad is believed to have remained in Syria.
French media say that Mohamed-Aggad was recruited by Mourad Fares, a man known to have actively recruited young Frenchmen on behalf of jihadist groups in Syria. Fares was arrested in Turkey last year and placed under provisional detention in France in September 2014. He is being prosecuted for a string of terrorism-related offences in France and Syria.
The three men stormed the Bataclan at around 21:40 on 13 November, during a concert by the Eagles of Death Metal rock group. They opened fire on concert-goers, repeatedly reloading their guns before police started to arrive at the scene. One of the gunmen was killed but the two others took hostages and eventually died when elite police units launched a final assault hours later.
Mohamed-Aggad was identified late last week by police after DNA samples were confirmed to match with members of his family. The two others who blew themselves up at the music venue were identified as Frenchmen Omar Ismail Mostefai, 29, and Samy Amimour, 28.
All three gunmen who attacked the venue wearing suicide vests have been confirmed as French nationals. Other attackers who took part in the coordinated attacks around Paris on 13 November that killed 130 people in total have either been identified as home-grown French or Belgian extremists.
The BBC’s Hugh Schofield in Paris said we can now be sure that Mostefai, Amimour, Mohamed-Aggad, Bilal Hadfi and suspected ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud had all travelled to Syria. He said Mohamed-Aggad appears to have spent longer than the others in Syria.
In addition, two of the Stade de France attackers were believed to have come to Europe via the Greek island of Leros and may have been posing as Syrian refugees. One other Paris attacker remains to be identified.
The attacks are suspected to have been masterminded by Abdelhamid Abaaoud, killed in a police raid in Saint-Denis a few days later. But another key figure, Salah Abdeslam, is on the run. The 26-year-old French national born in Brussels has been identified as a key suspect, and he is the subject of a massive police manhunt in Belgium and beyond. Also on the run is Mohamed Abrini.
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