France launches air strikes in Syria, Paris investigation widens

ATTACKER NAMED

Police have formally named just one of the attackers: Ismael Omar Mostefai, 29, from Chartres, southwest of Paris. He was identified by the print from one of his fingers that was severed when his suicide vest exploded.

French media named the two other French assailants as Bilal Hadfi and Ibrahim Abdeslam.

Police said they had found a Syrian passport near one of the other dead gunmen. Greece said the passport holder had crossed from Turkey to the Greek islands last month and then registered for asylum in Serbia before heading north, following a route taken by hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers this year.

The news revived a furious a row within the European Union on how to handle the flood of refugees. Top Polish and Slovak officials poured cold water on an EU plan to relocate asylum seekers across the bloc, saying the violence underlined their concerns about taking in Muslim refugees.

Bavarian allies of German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for a reversal of her "open-door" refugee policy, saying the attacks underlined the need for tougher controls.

"The days of uncontrolled immigration and illegal entry can't continue just like that. Paris changes everything," Bavarian finance minister Markus Soeder told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

France has declared three days of national mourning and President Francois Hollande will make a rare address to the joint upper and lower houses of parliament on Monday at the Palace of Versailles, just outside Paris.

JITTERY MOOD

Illustrating the jittery mood in the French capital, hundreds of people gathered at a makeshift memorial in Place de la Republique scattered in panic on Sunday night when they thought shots had rung out. It was a false alarm, police said.

Speaking in Vienna, Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said his country's intelligence services had shared information indicating that France, the United States and Iran were among countries at risk of an attack.

At a G20 summit in Turkey, US President Barack Obama vowed to step up efforts to eliminate Islamic State and prevent it carrying out attacks like those in Paris. EU leaders urged Russia to focus its military efforts on the radical Islamists.

France was the first European state to join US air strikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq, in September 2014, while a year later it extended its air strikes to Syria. Russia began its own air campaign in Syria in October, but has been targeting mainly areas controlled by other groups opposed to its ally, President Bashar al-Assad, Moscow's critics say.

France had already been on high alert since Islamist gunmen stormed the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket in Paris in January, killing 17 people.

Those attacks briefly united France in defence of freedom of speech, with a mass demonstration of more than a million people. But far-right populist Marine Le Pen is now making gains by blaming France's security problems on immigration and Islam.

"By spreading out migrants through the villages and towns of France, there is a fear that terrorists will take advantage of these population flows to hit out at us," she said after meeting the French president on Sunday.