Gunfire erupted in a north Paris suburb early on Wednesday as special police forces launched an operation to catch suspects believed to be behind gun and bomb attacks in which 129 people were killed last week, a police source told Reuters. Several suspected attackers and potential accomplices remained holed up in an apartment after the shoot-out, the source said. Friday night's attacks in the French capital, claimed by Islamic State militants, raised security concerns around the world, with an international soccer match called off in Germany and two Air France (AIRF.PA) flights from the United States diverted. In Syria, France and Russia bombed targets to punish Islamic State for the coordinated Paris massacre and the downing of a Russian airliner over Sinai on Oct. 31. French TV stations BFMTV and iTele both showed amateur video of Wednesday's early morning shooting and cited witnesses in the area as saying they had heard sporadic gunfire from around 4:30 a.m. ( 10.30 p.m. ET). BFMTV said some police had been wounded during the operation, which took place near the Stade de France sports stadium where three suicide bombers detonated their explosive belts and killed a passer-by on Friday. French prosecutors have identified five of the seven dead assailants from Friday - four Frenchmen and a man who was fingerprinted in Greece among refugees last month. But they now believe two men directly involved in the assault subsequently escaped. Wednesday's operation came after a source with knowledge of the investigation said a cell phone had been found with a map of the music venue targeted in one of the attacks and a text message on it saying words to the effect of "let's go". The source said the phone was found in a dustbin near the Bataclan concert hall where the bloodiest of the shootings took place. Islamic State said it carried out the attacks in retaliation for French and Russian air raids in Iraq and Syria. Investigators said the Paris plot was hatched in Syria and nurtured in Belgium. http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/168972.aspx
