Police search for Belgian thought to be commander of Paris attacks

PARIS (Reuters) - A Belgian national currently in Syria and believed to be one of Islamic State's most active operators is suspected of being behind Friday's attacks in Paris, according to a source close to the French investigation.

'He appears to be the brains behind several planned attacks in Europe,” the source told Reuters of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, adding he was investigators' best lead as the person likely behind the killing of at least 129 people in Paris on Friday.

According to RTL Radio, Abaaoud is a 27-year-old from the Molenbeek suburb of Brussels, home to other members of the militant Islamist cell suspected of having carried out the attacks.

Media in Belgium said Abaaoud had been involved in a series of planned attacks in Belgium foiled by the police last January.

At the time, Belgian police in the town of Verviers killed two men who opened fire on them during one of about a dozen raids against an Islamist group that federal prosecutors said was about to launch 'terrorist attacks on a grand scale.”

At the moment of the Verviers events, Abaaoud's cellphone was located in Greece, RTL said. While there was no clear link established, French prosecutors said fingerprints from one of the suicide bombers matched the prints of a man registered in Greece in October.

In February of this year, Islamic State's online magazine Dabiq carried an interview with an Islamist bearing the name of Abdelhamid Abaaoud and boasting of having traveled through Europe unnoticed by security forces to organize attacks and procure weapons.

Abaaoud was also named in various media last year as the elder brother of a 13-year-old boy who left Belgium to become a child-fighter in Syria.

Interviewed by Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws earlier this year, their father Omar Abaaoud disowned his older son.

'Abdelhamid has brought shame to our family. Our lives are equally destroyed. Why would he want to kill innocent Belgians? Our family owes everything to this country,” he said.

The search for Abaaoud comes as French police announced a series of arrests as a result of raids of suspected militants.

Authorities said they made 23 arrests and seized assault rifles and drugs in a nationwide overnight sweep on suspected Islamist militants following Friday's attacks, the government said.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said 168 homes were raided in France's major cities and elsewhere, and 104 people had been put under house arrest in the last 48 hours.

Police seized 31 firearms as well as computer hard drives and telephones, and illegal drugs were found in 18 of the raids, Cazeneuve told journalists.

One Islamist militant suspected of arms and drugs dealing was found to have Kalashnikov assault rifles, automatic handguns and bullet proof vests.

In one raid on the house of the parents of a suspect, police found military fatigues and a rocket launcher in addition to more bullet proof vests and automatic handguns.

'We know that more attacks are being prepared, not just against France but also against other European countries,” Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on RTL radio.

Cazeneuve said police were making rapid progress in their investigation into a wave of shootings and suicide bombings in Paris which left 129 people dead.

'We are making use of the legal framework of the state of emergency to question people who are part of the radical jihadist movement ... and all those who advocate hate of the republic,” Valls said.