The French prosecutor’s office on Thursday confirmed that the Paris terror attacks mastermind Abdelhamid Abaaoud was killed in the raid on an apartment in the Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis on Wednesday. The prosecutor said in a statement that the 27-year-old Belgian national's body was formally identified after comparing fingerprints. “It was the body we had discovered in the building, riddled with bullets,” it added. The police had earlier said that the identification of a third suspect killed during the raid was taking longer than expected because the entire third floor of the building had collapsed.

Along with Abaaoud, a woman who blew herself up with an explosive-laden vest was also killed in the seven-hour-long raid. The police launched the operation after receiving information from tapped phone calls, surveillance and tipoffs suggesting that Abaaoud was holed up there, reported AFP.

In a separate development, the lower house of the French Parliament voted to extend the state of emergency in the country for three months, following the terror attacks on November 13 in which 129 people were killed. French President Francois Hollande had announced the state of emergency shortly after the attacks.