EU nations promise action to stanch inflow of extremists

BRUSSELS (AP) – European Union nations promised Friday to quickly tighten the bloc’s vast external border to prevent more violent extremists from coming in, and French authorities reported that a third body had been found in a Paris apartment raided by police.

One week after coordinated attacks claimed by Islamic State killed 130 people in Paris, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve and the other EU interior and justice ministers used an emergency meeting to push for the next steps to increase security and prevent more bloodshed.

“We have talked enough. We have to act. It’s not an option, it’s an obligation,” said Luxembourg’s domestic security minster, Etienne Schneider, who chaired the meeting in Brussels.

France and Belgium urged their EU partners to tighten gun laws, toughen border security and choke off funds to extremist groups.

“Terrorists are crossing the borders of the European Union,” said Cazeneuve, underlining why the 28-nation bloc must move forward on a long-delayed system for collecting and exchanging airline passenger information, data he said is vital “for tracing the return of foreign fighters” from Syria and Iraq.

The EU exchanges such information with the U.S., Australia and Canada, but has proved incapable of agreeing a system for sharing data between its members.

France has called for inter-European flights to be included in the data sweep and wants the information it retains – names, credit card details, itinerary and other personal data -to be kept for one year instead of one month.

Despite deadly attacks on Paris in January, talks among EU nations and with the EU legislature have gone at a snail’s pace for years on vital security issues while violent extremism has thrived.

“We have to bring an end to the promises for another day… these delays, otherwise Europe will be lost,” Cazeneuve told reporters after the meeting. “We need strong actions. We must move swiftly and with force. Europe owes it to all victims of terrorism and those who are close to them.”

The chairman of an influential European Parliament committee believes the EU can finally seal a deal by the end of next month on sharing air passenger information.

“It is entirely possible for a strong (PNR) proposal to be completed before the end of 2015,” Claude Moraes, the chairman of the assembly’s civil liberties committee told The Associated Press.

The narrative provided by French officials on the coordinated attacks a week ago on France’s national stadium and Paris cafes, restaurants and a theater raises disturbing questions about how a wanted militant already suspected of involvement in multiple plots could slip into Europe undetected.

French investigators quickly identified Belgian-born Abdelhamid Abaaoud, 28, as the architect of the attacks in Paris, but believed he had coordinated the assaults against a soccer stadium, cafes and a rock concert from the battlefields of Syria.

That situation changed drastically on Monday when France received a tip from a non-European country that Abaaoud had slipped back into Europe through Greece.

How and when Abaaoud entered France before his death remained unclear. He had bragged in the Islamic State group’s English-language magazine that he was able to move in and out of Europe undetected.

As it turned out, not only was Abaaoud in Europe, but he was just a 15-minute walk from the French national stadium where three suicide bombers blew themselves up during the Nov. 13 attacks.

Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said Abaaoud was traced to an apartment in Saint-Denis through phone taps and surveillance. Following a seven-hour assault on the apartment Wednesday, police said the suspected plot ringleader and his female cousin both died in a hail of bullets and explosions.

On Friday, the Paris prosecutor’s office said three bodies had been found in the apartment, including Abaaoud and his cousin Hasna Aitboulahcen, 26. The identity of the third body has not been announced.

Belgian authorities on Friday released seven people detained a day earlier, but continued to hold one person suspected of links to the Paris attacks and another linked to French stadium bomber Bilal Hadfi but not directly to the Paris attacks.

French police official Jean-Marc Falcone, speaking on France-Info radio, said he was unable to say if fugitive Salah Abdeslam, a friend of Abaaoud, could be back on French territory. French police stopped Abdeslam the morning after Friday’s attacks at the Belgian border but then let him go. His brother Brahim was one of the Paris suicide bombers.

French President Francois Hollande’s office said he will lead a national ceremony on Nov. 27 honoring the victims of the deadliest attacks on France in decades. The ceremony will be at the gold-domed Hotel des Invalides, where Napoleon’s tomb lies and which is seen as a symbol of France’s military and international strength.

Hollande is also going to Washington and Moscow next week to push for a stronger international coalition against IS.

Of the more than 350 people wounded in the attacks, scores are in critical condition. Prime Minister Manuel Valls said one more person has died, raising the death toll to 130, a tally that does not include any of the attackers.

Valls made the announcement Friday in a speech to the Senate, which is expected to approve a three-month extension to France’s state of emergency.

Under gray skies and rain, Parisians marked a week since the bloodbath with silence and reflection. Most demonstrations have been banned in the city since the attacks, but Parisians have been spontaneously gathering all week outside the restaurants, cafes and concert halls hit in the attacks to leave flowers, light candles or hold quiet vigils.

“I’m still reeling, because these are the neighborhoods where we young people go out a lot, places we know well,” student Sophie Garcon said as she looked at tributes left outside the Le Carillon bar.

Dozens of French artists, writers and musicians urged people to defy the extremists and light candles and play music exactly at 9:20 p.m., the time the attacks began a week ago.