Brussels // Belgian police have identified three safe houses used by key suspects including presumed ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud as they plotted the deadly Paris attacks, prosecutors said on Wednesday.
The premises include a flat in Charleroi, a town south of the capital Brussels where a major airport is located, a house in the rural village of Auvelais near the French border, and a flat in Brussels.
“The investigators were able to identify three premises that have been used by the conspiring perpetrators of the attacks of 13th November 2015,” Eric Van Der Sypt, a spokesman for the federal prosecutor, said.
French president Francois Hollande has previously said that the Paris attacks in which 130 people were killed were planned in Syria but prepared and organised in Belgium.
ISIL has claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Belgian investigators found fingerprints from Abaaoud and suicide bomber Bilal Hadfi as well as mattresses at the flat in Charleroi, the prosecutor’s statement said.
Investigators say Hadfi blew himself up outside the Stade de France on the night of the attacks while French police killed Abaaoud in a raid north of Paris days after later.
Prosecutors announced last week the discovery of the Brussels flat in the Schaerbeek district, and said they had found the fingerprints of Paris fugitive Salah Abdeslam there along with traces of explosives and possible suicide belts.
But they revealed for the first time on Wednesday that they had also found DNA traces from Hadfi, precision scales and a drawing representing a person wearing a large belt.
No traces of explosives or weapons were found in either the Charleroi or Auvelais lodgings.
All of the accommodation was rented using false names and paid for in cash, prosecutors said.
An international manhunt has been under way for Belgian-born Abdeslam, 26, since suicide bombers and assailants firing automatic weapons launched the wave of attacks across Paris.
France has said that Abaaoud, a Brussels resident, was the mastermind.
A source close to the investigator said last week that investigators still did not know “where the weapons came from, and who coordinated the attacks”.
Nor do they know where the ingredients for “the home-made explosives” were bought or what operational links the attackers had with ISIL.
* Agence France-Presse
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