Paris: French Prime Minister Manuel Valls on Thursday warned that the associates of extremists who targeted France last week could use chemical and biological weapons, as he urged Parliament to extend a state of emergency.
"We must not rule anything out. There is also the risk from chemical or biological weapons," Valls said during a debate in French parliament on the extension of emergency.
Meanwhile, the hunt for the mastermind of last week's attacks on the French capital is on with some reports suggesting that he may have committed suicide.
Police had raided a Paris suburb on Wednesday in search of Belgian terrorist Abdelhamid Abaaoud where a fierce gunbattle at least two people dead and eight arrested.
The fate of the alleged ringleader was unclear, with authorities saying he was not taken alive and they were trying to determine if he died in the raid.
Police launched the operation after receiving information from tapped phone calls, surveillance and tipoffs suggesting that 27-year-old Abdelhamid Abaaoud was holed up in an apartment in Paris' Saint-Denis neighborhood.
Terrified residents awoke to gunfire and explosions as a SWAT team swooped in and "neutralized" what Paris Prosecutor Francois Molins called a "new team of terrorists" that appeared ready for a new attack.
Molins said the identities of the dead were still being investigated, but that neither Abaaoud nor another fugitive, Salah Abdeslam, was in custody.
The attack in Paris last Friday had left 129 dead with scores of others ending up injured. President Francois Hollande had declared a state of emergency following the attacks and had said that France was "at war" with the Islamic State group, which has claimed responsibility for the attacks.
(With inputs from AP)
