Amid a flood of criticism on social media about a Daily Mail cartoon about refugees entering Europe, New York Times Beirut bureau chief Anne Barnard points out that none of the Paris attackers identified so far are Syrian.
A Syrian passport found close to the body of one of the Stade de France suicide bombers may have belonged to a Syrian soldier killed several months ago, a source close to the investigation told AFP.
The passport is in the name of Ahmad al-Mohammad, a 25-year-old from Idlib city in Syria, who French investigators believe was a soldier loyal to Bashar al-Assad's government.
A man was arrested in Serbia on November 17 carrying a passport bearing the same details as that found near the body of the Paris attacker and raised concerns that the passport discovered in Paris was fake and purchased from the same forger in Turkey.
Britain says it will deploy a Royal Navy warship, the HMS Defender, to support French efforts to bomb IS in Syria.
The warship, a Type 45 destroyer, will support French aircraft carrier the Charles de Gaulle, which left Toulon for the Gulf today to ease the burden on the 12 French war planes already operating against IS in Syria and Iraq by adding another 20 planes.
British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said in a statement that "France is firmly resolved in its determination to tackle [the IS group] and we need to help too."
"This barbaric terrorist organization must be destroyed and it’s right that we offer all the support we can to confront them...We will consider any further requests for support from France under Article 42.7 of the EU Treaty following Friday’s Paris terror attacks," Fallon added.
As French President Francois Hollande said France was committed to "destroying" the IS group following the deadly attacks in Paris last week, air strikes by France and other nations killed at least 33 IS militants in the extremist group's stronghold of Raqqa in Syria, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which monitors the conflict.
The strikes took place over the last three days, SOHR say.
SOHR activists say that families of IS militants have started to evacuate Raqqa for the Iraqi city of Mosul, which is also under IS control.
France's RTL radio station is reporting that the female suicide bomber who blew herself up during this morning's raid on an apartment in Saint-Denis in Paris made a call before detonating her suicide vest. RTL says the information came from a police source.
French President Francois Hollande in a speech to a gathering of mayors in Paris said the raid on Saint-Denis was to "neutralize terrorists" linked to the November 13 attacks in the French capital that killed 129 people.
"We are at war...a war against a terrorism that has decided to launch a war against us," Hollande said, calling for a "large coalition" to fight the IS group, which claimed responsibility for the deadly attacks in Paris.
Salah Abdesalam, a 26-year-old Belgian suspected of taking part in the Paris attacks, was briefly arrested in the Netherlands in February for possession of cannabis, France's RTL is reporting.
The Dutch police said that the arrest had been a "routine" traffic stop and a "limited" quantity of cannabis had been found during a search of the car. Abdesalam was allowed to continue his journey after a 70 Euro fine, the Dutch police said.
AFP reported earlier that Abdesalam was the target of the Saint-Denis police raid along with alleged Paris attacks mastermind Abdulhamid Abaaoud.
France's BFM TV is reporting that the woman who died when she blew herself up with a suicide vest during the police raid in Paris today is the cousin of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the lead suspect in the November 13 Paris attacks.
Mashable has created a Twitter account, @ParisVictims, to memorialize the 129 victims of last week's terrorist attacks in Paris.
The account is tweeting photos and sharing details of the lives of the 129 people who lost their lives in the deadly attacks. The tweets include the hashtag #enmemoire, which means "in memory" in French.
Mashable has created longer profiles of the victims on its website, with information obtained from media reports and statements put out by victims' family members and friends.
Paris prosecutor Francois Molins says that the identities of those arrested and killed during the seven-hour raid police raid on an apartment in Paris today are not clear, AP reports. Seven people were arrested and two suspects killed, Molins said.
Authorities are working to determine the fate of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected mastermind of the November 13 deadly attacks in the French capital, according to AP. Molins said the raid began after police gathered intelligence via eavesdropping on phone conversations, surveillance and witness statements that Abaaoud could be in a safe house in Saint-Denis.
From our news desk:
Turkey and the United States say they will intensify operations to clear part of the Turkish-Syrian border of Islamic State (IS) militants.
"We have certain plans to terminate the [IS] presence on our border,” Turkish Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlioglu told the state-run Anadolu Agency on November 17.
“Once these plans are finalized, our operations will intensify," he added. "You will see this in the coming days."
The IS group controls a portion of Syria's border with Turkey, allowing the group to smuggle in fighters, arms, and equipment.
"Seventy-five 75 percent of [Turkish-Syrian border] has now been shut off,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told CNN. “And we are entering an operation with the Turks to shut off the other remaining 98 kilometers."
Based on reporting by AP and Reuters