World

ROME/STOCKHOLM — Police in Italy and Sweden tried to track down suspected militants and increased security around public buildings on Thursday after receiving reports that attacks might be planned on their soil following last week's mass killings in Paris.

Italy's foreign minister said possible attacks could be aimed at St Peter's Basilica in Rome or the cathedral or La Scala theatre in Milan. In Stockholm, police stepped up their presence around the parliament and main railway stations.

Both countries were on a high state of alert to guard against any possible attack.

Rome's underground train operator temporarily closed lines on three separate occasions during the day due to suspicious packages, which all proved to be false alarms.

Milan's top city authorities said after a meeting with police officials that there was "no specific evidence of an imminent danger for the city of Milan", but security measures remained at their "maximum level".

In Germany, Bild newspaper reported that a group of attackers had planned to set off multiple explosives in Hannover stadium at Tuesday night's friendly football match between Germany and the Netherlands, and to detonate a bomb in the city centre.

Swedish security services said they had concrete information about a possible attack on the country, days after the militant attacks in Paris that killed 129 people.

Swedish police were searching for a suspect identified as Mutar Muthanna Majid and distributed a grainy picture of a smiling, bearded young man dressed in dark clothing.

Tabloid Expressen said Majid was a member of Daesh. The news agency TT and newspaper Aftonbladet both quoted anonymous sources as saying he is part of a bigger group of accomplices currently in or on their way to Sweden. A police spokesman would not comment on the report.

Police raised their presence at public and strategic locations around the country, including government buildings, foreign embassies and some media outlets.

Fewer people than normal were using trains and subways in the capital.

"I don't recognise my Stockholm," Camilla Kvartoft, a news anchor at public television station SVT, tweeted.

The president of Sweden's council of Jewish communities, Lena Posner Korosi, said evening activities such as sports training for youths were cancelled in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmo after discussions with police.

Over the last few years, Sweden has participated in NATO missions in Afghanistan and is training Kurdish forces in Iraq, moves that have changed its traditional image of neutrality.

In Rome, Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said security forces were working to identify five people suspected of planning possible attacks.

The US embassy in Rome said in a message to its citizens that big tourist sites, churches, synagogues, restaurants, theatres and hotels in Italy's two main cities might be targets.

It urged Americans to be vigilant as militant groups "may possibly utilise similar methods used in the recent Paris attacks". There was no suggestion from authorities that the threat encompassed plans for a specific attack.

Gentiloni said Italy was ready to help its "French brothers" in the fight against Daesh but rejected the possibility of the Western coalition sending ground troops into Syria.

"No one is going to put boots on the ground in Syria, not [French President Francois] Hollande, nor Obama, nor us," he said.

Like much of Europe, Italy is reluctant to join France and the United States in conducting air strikes over Syria because, without an express request from a government it recognises, it considers the legal justification uncertain.

Germany threat

Bild said it had obtained a copy of a document by the domestic intelligence service that detailed how attackers planned to set off several explosives in the stadium in Hannover, as well as a bomb in the city centre, during Tuesday's international soccer match. Chancellor Angela Merkel had been due to attend the game, which was called off.

The attackers planned to smuggle the explosives into the stadium in an ambulance, Bild cited the document as saying. After midnight, another attack was planned at Hanover railway station.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere told a news conference: "The indications were so concentrated that calling off the match was unavoidable. Whether the indications were a real threat, or just an indication, we don't know."

In the event, the authorities said they found no explosives at the stadium.

Meanwhile, European Union interior ministers are to agree on Friday to tighten checks at the external borders of the passport-free Schengen area to boost security after the Paris attacks, a draft document seen by Reuters showed.

Ministers will agree to "implement immediately the necessary systematic and coordinated checks at external borders, including on individuals enjoying the right of free movement", the draft conclusions of their meeting says.

The document reflects France's request to strengthen controls at the external borders of the 26-nation Schengen area, of which most EU countries are members.

SAINT DENIS, France — A woman suicide bomber blew herself up in a police raid that sources said had foiled a militant plan to hit Paris' business district, days after attacks that killed 129 across the French capital.

Police stormed an apartment in the Paris suburb of St Denis in a hunt for Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian militant accused of masterminding the bombings and shootings, but more than 15 hours later it was still unclear if they had found him.

Heavily armed officers entered the building before dawn, triggering a massive firefight and multiple explosions. Eight people were arrested and forensic scientists were working to confirm if two or three militants died in the violence.

"A new team of terrorists has been neutralised," Paris Prosecutor Francois Molins told reporters, saying police had fired 5,000 rounds of munitions into the apartment, which was left shredded by the assault, its windows blown out and the facade riddled with bullet impacts.

"This commando could have become operational," Molins said.

A source close to the investigation said the dead woman might have been Abaaoud's cousin, while The Washington Post quoted senior intelligence officials as saying Abaaoud himself had died in the shootout.

Molins said none of the bodies had been identified, adding only that Abaaoud was not amongst those detained.

Police were led to the apartment following a tip off that the 28-year-old Belgian, previously thought to have orchestrated the November 13 attacks from Syria, was actually in France.

Investigators believe the attacks — the worst atrocity in France since World War II — were set in motion in Syria, with militant cells in neighbouring Belgium organising the mayhem.

Local residents spoke of their fear and panic as the shooting started in St Denis just before 4.30am (0330 GMT).

"We could see bullets flying and laser beams out of the window. There were explosions. You could feel the whole building shake," said Sabrine, a downstairs neighbour from the apartment that was raided.

She told Europe 1 radio that she heard the people above her talking to each other, running around and reloading their guns.

Another local, Sanoko Abdulai, said that as the operation gathered pace, a young woman detonated an explosion.

“She had a bomb, that’s for sure. The police didn’t kill her, she blew herself up...,” he told Reuters, without giving details. Five police officers and a passerby were injured in the assault. A police dog was also killed.

Fleeing Raqqa

Daesh, which controls swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq, has claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks, saying they were in retaliation for French air raids against their positions over the past year.

France has called for a global coalition to defeat the radicals and has launched three air strikes on Raqqa — the de-facto Daesh capital in northern Syria — since the weekend. Russia has also targeted the city in retribution for the downing of a Russian airliner last month that killed 224.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said on Wednesday the bombardments have killed at least 33 Daesh militants over the past three days.

Citing activists, the Observatory said Daesh members and dozens of families of senior members had started fleeing Raqqa to relocate to Mosul in neighbouring Iraq.

French prosecutors have identified five of the seven dead assailants from Friday — four Frenchmen and a man who was fingerprinted in Greece last month after arriving in the country via Turkey with a boatload of refugees fleeing the Syria war.

Police believe two men directly involved in the assault subsequently escaped, including Salah Abdeslam, 26, a Belgian-based Frenchman who is accused of having played a central role in both planning and executing the deadly mission.

French authorities said on Wednesday they had identified all the November 13 victims. They came from 17 different countries, many of them young people out enjoying themselves at bars, restaurants, a concert hall and a football stadium.

Empowered by a state of emergency introduced in France last Friday, police here have made hundreds of sweeps across the country over the past three days, arresting 60 suspects, putting 118 under house arrest and seizing 75 weapons.

Until Wednesday morning, officials had said Abaaoud was in Syria. He grew up in Brussels, but media said he moved to Syria in 2014 to fight with Daesh. Since then he has travelled back to Europe at least once and was involved in a series of planned attacks in Belgium foiled by the police last January.

Two police sources and a source close to the investigation told Reuters that the St Denis cell was planning a fresh attack. “This new team was planning an attack on La Defence,” one source said, referring to a high-rise neighbourhood on the outskirts of Paris that is home to top banks and businesses.

A man in St Denis told reporters that he had rented out the besieged apartment to two people last week.

“Someone asked me a favour, I did them a favour. Someone asked me to put two people up for three days and I did them a favour, it’s normal. I don’t know where they came from I don’t know anything,” the man told Reuters Television.

He was later arrested by police.

Aircraft carrier

Global anxiety was reflected in a flurry of new security alerts on Wednesday after a football match between Germany and the Netherlands was cancelled on Tuesday evening in response to what a senior politician called a “concrete indication” of danger.

Sweden raised its threat level by one step to four on a scale of five, the high-speed Eurostar train that connects Paris and London briefly suspended check-in at Paris’s Gare du Nord and several German Bundesliga football teams said they were beefing up security ahead of their matches.

The Russian air force on Wednesday carried out a “mass strike” on Islamic State positions around Syria, including Raqqa, Russian news agencies reported.

Paris and Moscow are not coordinating their air strikes in Syria, but French President Francois Hollande is due to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on November 26 to discuss how their countries’ militaries might work together.

Hollande will meet US President Barack Obama, who says Russia must shift its focus from “propping up” Syrian President Bashar Assad, two days before that in Washington.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that Western nations had to drop their demands for Assad’s exit if they wanted to build a coalition against Daesh.

Russia is allied to Assad but the West says he must go if there is to be a political solution to Syria’s prolonged civil war. Hollande said countries should set aside their sometimes diverging national interests to battle their common foe.

“The international community must rally around that spirit. I know very well that each country doesn’t have the same interests,” he told an assembly of city mayors on Wednesday.

A French aircraft carrier group was headed to the eastern Mediterranean to intensify the number of strikes in Syria. Russia has said its navy will cooperate with this mission.

ANKARA — Greece and its neighbour Turkey on Wednesday agreed to "urgently" unite efforts to tackle the flow of refugees entering the European Union member state from Turkish territory.

Visiting Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu vowed to step up cooperation between their migration services and coastguards to beat the scourge of human trafficking.

"As both Greece and Turkey, our first priority should be to end the humanitarian tragedy in the Aegean Sea," said Tsipras, referring to the drowning of hundreds of Greece-bound migrants this year.

"This is an international crisis. No country can fight it alone."

Tsipras, whose country is still battling the effects of its financial crisis, called for joint efforts to combat human smugglers after the Paris attacks threw a spotlight on security implications of the migrant flow. 

"They [the smugglers] are... an insult, a threat to humanity. They do not hesitate to jeopardise people's lives," he said. 

Turkey, the main launching pad for migrants fleeing to Europe in search of better lives, is under pressure to impose stricter controls on human smuggling into the European Union.

Ankara and Athens agreed to "urgently start cooperation" on the level of foreign ministers as well as migration and coastguard authorities, in order to fight trafficking networks and grant legal resettlement rights for migrants, said the Greek premier.

As a first sign of the new mechanism, the Greek coastguard commander was holding talks in Ankara with his Turkish counterpart, he noted.

Turkey, a vocal critic of Syrian President Bashar Assad, is currently playing host to 2.2 million Syrian refugees, and negotiating an action plan with the EU. 

In return for its help, Turkey has demanded the EU provide three billion euros ($3.3 billion) a year in funding, visa-free travel for Turkish nationals and an end to the stalemate in talks for Ankara to join the 28-nation bloc.

"Neither Turkey nor Greece are responsible for the refugee crisis," Davutoglu said. "They are both the victims of the Syrian crisis."

He called for a political solution to end the bloodshed in Syria, and said: "A final solution passes through Damascus."

More than 650,000 migrants and refugees, have reached the Greek islands so far in 2015 using the eastern Mediterranean route, the International Organisation for Migration said earlier this month. Of those, 512 people died. 

Just a few hours after Tsipras arrived in Turkey Tuesday, at least nine people, including four children, drowned when a boat carrying migrants from Turkey sank off the Greek island of Kos. 

Athens fears coming under renewed EU pressure over the migrant crisis after the discovery at the scene of one of Friday's Paris attacks of a Syrian passport registered in the Greek island of Leros on October 3. The document was found near the body of a suicide bomber but investigators believe it may have belonged to a Syrian regime soldier killed several months ago.

Tsipras said police measures alone would not be enough to combat the problem. "Neither Frontex nor someone else can solve this problem unless a political solution is found," he said, referring to the EU border cooperation agency.

Tsipras and Davutoglu attended an international football friendly between Turkey and Greece on Tuesday, but the match in Istanbul was overshadowed by some Turkish fans booing the Greek team during a minute of silence for the victims of the Paris attacks.

Before travelling to Ankara, he held a 40-minute meeting with the Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians. 

Greece and Turkey have a fraught history going back centuries, with disputes over maritime borders and the partition of Cyprus. But tensions between the NATO allies have eased considerably in recent years.

MANILA — US President Barack Obama on Wednesday demanded China end artificial island building in the hotly contested South China Sea, upping the pressure on Beijing at a regional leaders' summit.

The annual Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) gathering is meant to forge unity on trade among 21 Pacific rim economies encompassing three billion people.

But the territorial row over the strategically vital South China Sea, as well as terrorism concerns following last week's deadly Paris rampage, have dominated the build-up to this year's meeting in the Philippines.

China has repeatedly insisted its disputes with its Asian neighbours over the sea, home to some of the world's most important shipping routes, should not be on the APEC agenda.

But just hours before the two-day summit started, Obama voiced concerns over giant land reclamation works by China that have created new islands close to the Philippines. 

"We discussed the impact of China's land reclamation and construction activities on regional stability," Obama told reporters after meeting Philippine President Benigno Aquino.

"We agree on the need for bold steps to lower tensions, including pledging to halt further reclamation, new construction, and militarisation of disputed areas in the South China Sea."

On Tuesday, Obama also announced more than $250 million in maritime aid to Washington's Southeast Asian allies — including a warship for the Philippines.

China claims nearly all of the South China Sea, even waters approaching the coasts of its Asian neighbours.

APEC members the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan have rival claims to parts of the sea, which is believed to sit atop vast oil and gas resources. 

China reacted angrily on Wednesday to Obama's efforts to bolster US allies in the dispute, as it insisted its construction work in the contested areas was "lawful, justified and reasonable". 

"If there is something that should stop, it is the United States should stop playing up the South China Sea issue, stop heightening tensions in the South China Sea," foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in Beijing.

In a speech at a business forum in Manila ahead of the summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping did not directly mention the territorial disputes.

But he did call on Pacific nations to "resolve our differences through dialogue and consultation".

"We must focus on development and spare no effort to foster an environment of peace conducive to development and never allow anything to disrupt the development process," he said.

Obama's speech to the business forum focused mostly on the need for the world to tackle global warming, insisting fighting climate change would not hurt the economy.

"We have to break out of the mindset that when we are doing something about climate change, we slow growth," Obama said.

While in Manila, Obama is also trying to promote a giant free trade pact signed last month that groups 12 Pacific nations but excludes China.

Obama met with the leaders of the other Trade-Pacific Partnership nations on the sidelines of APEC on Wednesday.

But in his speech, Xi urged Asian economies to sign up to its own free trade agreement, warning rival pacts risked hurting the regional economies.

"With various new regional free trade arrangements cropping up there have been worries about the potential of fragmentation," Xi said.

"We therefore need to accelerate the realisation of FTAAP and take regional economic integration forward."

The FTAAP is the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific, which China launched as APEC host last year. 

Still, at an evening reception for the leaders, Obama and Xi held an apparently relaxed discussion, with both of them smiling and standing close to each other.

Paris — France and Russia agreed Tuesday to coordinate their military and security services in an unusual alliance against the Daesh terror group in Syria after devastating attacks on Paris and the bombing of a Russian plane.

As French and Belgian investigators continued the manhunt for an eighth suspect involved in Friday's deadly assault, the war machines went into action, with both countries bombarding the Daesh stronghold of Raqqa. 

Paris and Moscow have vowed merciless retaliation for the attacks on the French capital and a Russian airliner that collectively killed more than 350 people and have galvanised international resolve to destroy the militants and end the nearly five-year Syrian war.

“It’s necessary to establish direct contact with the French and work with them as allies,” said Russian President Vladimir Putin as France prepared to send an aircraft carrier to the eastern Mediterranean, where the Russian navy is deployed.

French President Francois Hollande will meet Putin in Moscow on November 26, two days after seeing US President Barack Obama in Washington.

In grieving France, police racked up arrests and seized weapons as they scoured the country for clues after a wave of coordinated attacks by gunmen and suicide bombers on Friday night that left 129 dead and shook the country to its core.

Only 117 of the victims have been identified and 221 people are still in hospital.

In a sign of the nervousness around Europe, a football match between Germany and the Netherlands was cancelled because of “security reasons” and fans evacuated from the stadium in Hanover, police said.

However a match between France and England was to go ahead in the presence of Prince William, at London’s Wembley Stadium where fans were to join together in singing the French national anthem “La Marseillaise”.

The attacks targeted France’s national stadium, a rock concert, bars and restaurants, with the France squad particularly touched when a cousin of midfielder Lassana Diarra was named among the victims at the Bataclan concert hall where 89 were massacred.

A satirical tribute 

Paris is palpably more shaken than after the January attacks which killed 17 people at the Charlie Hebdo satirical weekly and a Jewish supermarket. 

The magazine itself unveiled its tribute cover for the attacks showing a dancing reveller, bottle and glass in hand, with champagne pouring out of holes in his body.

“They have weapons,” the caption reads, adding: “Screw them, we have champagne.”

In the southern city of Toulouse, itself targeted in a 2012 attack by a gunman, about 10,000 people gathered in a candlelit vigil Tuesday.

French investigators have identified five of seven attackers who were killed or blew themselves up in the Paris attacks, and have launched a manhunt for an eighth man, 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam, whose brother was one of the suicide bombers.

A bus driver and a bar owner were among the militants, most of whom were French and Belgian nationals, while one of them had a passport apparently issued in Syria.

Investigators believe Belgian militant Abdel Hamid Abaaoud, who is based in Syria and knew Salah Abdeslam, may have masterminded the attacks.

Police raids turned up a second car rented in Belgium by Abdeslam, saying his credit card was used to rent two hotel rooms in a suburb outside Paris on the eve of the attack. Another room was rented by his brother in the Parisian suburb of Bobigny three days before the attack.

French, Russian rapprochement 

In a rousing speech Monday, Hollande vowed to destroy Daesh, saying there would be “no respite and no truce” and on Tuesday, France invoked a previously unused European Union article to ask member states for help in its mission. 

It received unanimous backing from Brussels.

And it also forged an unexpected alliance with Russia after both countries were targeted by deadly Daesh attacks. 

On Tuesday, Russia finally confirmed that the Russian passenger jet that crashed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula last month, killing 224, had been brought down by a bomb in an attack claimed by Daesh.

Following a phone call between Putin and Hollande, the Kremlin said they had “agreed to assure closer contact and coordination between the military and security service agencies of the two countries in actions against terrorist groups... in Syria”. 

Government spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was “too early” to speak of a coalition but said the scope of their interaction would be determined by their two militaries.

Paris and Moscow have been at loggerheads over Russia’s role in the Ukraine conflict, as well over the fate of Syria’s President Bashar Assad but have now become strange bedfellows.

The alliance comes as international players meet to discuss ways of ending the Syrian war which has seen millions going into exile, triggered Europe’s worst migrant crisis since World War II and spurred the rise of Daesh.

On a solidarity visit to Paris, US Secretary of State John Kerry said a “big transition” in Syria was probably only weeks away after deeply-divided countries such as Iran, Russia and Saudi Arabia reached agreement at the weekend on a path towards elections in the war-torn country. 

However regime and opposition representatives have yet to sit down together, there is little agreement on the role of Assad in any transition.

MANILA — US President Barack Obama put tensions over Beijing's claims to the South China Sea squarely on the agenda ahead of an Asia-Pacific summit on Tuesday, pointedly visiting the main warship of close ally the Philippines shortly after he landed in Manila.

While Obama affirmed a commitment to the Philippines' security and to freedom of navigation in regional waters, a senior official in Beijing said China was the real victim of the waterway dispute because other countries had illegally occupied islands there.

The verbal jousting could cast a shadow over the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit of about 20 heads of state and government, including Chinese President Xi Jinping. Manila has said it will not bring up the maritime dispute to avoid embarrassing Xi, but could not prevent others from doing so.

Xi also arrived in Manila on Tuesday, but did not make any public comments.

Shortly after Air Force One touched down in Manila, Obama boarded the Gregorio del Pilar, a Philippines navy frigate that was a US Coast Guard cutter until 2011 but on Tuesday flew the flags of the two allies.

"We have a treaty obligation, an iron-clad commitment to the defence of our ally the Philippines," he said, flanked by about two dozen US and Philippines uniformed navy personnel. "My visit here underscored our shared commitment to the security of the waters of this region and to freedom of navigation."

He did not mention China but the symbolism of his visit was hard to miss: the ageing vessel is now a mainstay of the Philippine navy, operating around the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea that are claimed by both Manila and Beijing.

Obama also announced two more US ships would be transferred to the Philippines as part of a two-year $250 million package to enhance regional maritime security — a research vessel to help navigate territorial waters and a coast guard cutter for "long endurance patrols".

He brought the dispute up again at a meeting with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, telling reporters it was important to uphold the "basic principle that these issues should be resolved by international norms and rule of law, and peacefully settled".

Hours earlier, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin said China was the real victim in the South China Sea dispute as "dozens" of its islands and reefs had been illegally occupied by three of the claimants. He did not name any countries.

"The Chinese government has the right and the ability to recover the islands and reefs illegally occupied," Liu told reporters in Beijing. "But we haven't done this. We have maintained great restraint with the aim to preserve peace and stability."

Beijing has overlapping claims with Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei in the South China Sea, through which $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year.

Last week, US B-52 bombers flew near Chinese artificial islands in the area, signalling Washington's determination to challenge Beijing over the disputed sea.

The APEC meeting is the first of two regional summits that were supposed to bolster trade and security ties, but have been clouded by last week's coordinated attacks on Paris by the Daesh terror group.

Earlier this week, the G-20 summit in Turkey was also dominated by discussions about the violence emanating from Syria's four-and-a-half year-old civil war.

From Manila, many of the leaders go on to Kuala Lumpur to attend an East Asia summit at the weekend.

For Obama, the latest flurry of summitry illustrates how his effort to "rebalance" US policy toward Asia-Pacific countries has consistently run into the geopolitical reality that the persistently volatile Middle East cannot be ignored.

The Philippines was on high alert as the leaders arrived for the APEC meeting.

Police in Manila, a city of 12 million, closed off many roads leading to the venues of the meeting, causing heavy traffic jams. Local media said the gridlock was so bad that a woman in labour didn't make it to hospital and gave birth in her car.

Philippines officials say there has been no intelligence suggesting there might be an attack on the Manila summit but about 30,000 police and soldiers have been deployed to guard it.

In a draft of the APEC leaders' final statement seen by Reuters, the leaders condemned terrorism and said they were resolved to counter it together.

"Under the shadow cast by the recent attacks in Paris, we stand in solidarity with the people of France and all victims of terrorism elsewhere," the statement draft said.

Obama said he and Australia's Turnbull also discussed ramping up pressure on Daesh.

WASHINGTON — Senior US officials defended Tuesday their programme for accepting Syrian refugees and insisted that screening was stringent enough to prevent letting extremists slip into the country.

President Barack Obama's government attempted to brush aside threats from state governors to block the resettlement effort, arguing that it is a federal policy and legitimate refugees must enjoy freedom of movement.

But officials admitted that, after fears stirred by last week's massacre in Paris, they are now wary of losing the support of the public and Congress for America's four-decade policy of welcoming refugees.

A senior administration official, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity, called the programme "a proud American tradition that not only saves lives but also enriches our country and our nation". 

Around half of the governors of the 50 US states, along with Congressman Paul Ryan, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, have urged Obama to suspend a plan to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees this fiscal year.

But it was not clear what practical effect opposition at the state level would have on a federal programme that the president has defended passionately.

"This is a federal program carried out under the authority of federal law and refugees arriving in the US are protected by the Constitution and federal law," the senior official told reporters.

Once accepted for resettlement the refugees can apply for permanent residence and enjoy freedom of movement within the United States, although some of their resettlement support may be tied to a location.

While remaining the world's biggest destination for refugees, the United States has been slow to respond to the worsening civil war in Syria, accepting a little over 2,000 refugees in the first four years of fighting.

Obama has now promised to take 10,000 in the fiscal year that began on October 1, chosen from families vetted by the UN refugee agency in camps in Turkey, Jordan, Egypt and in the near future Lebanon.

After being chosen by the United Nations as being particularly vulnerable due to their health or economic circumstances, the candidates receive 18 to 24 months of screening by US security and intelligence agencies.

US officials boast that these checks make them the most thoroughly vetted of any category of traveller heading to the United States, but public concerns remain that extremists may be hiding in their ranks.

And, in the wake of the Paris attacks, opponents of the scheme argue that speeding arrivals as Obama has promised will lead to a loosening of security standards — a claim dismissed by the administration's experts.

A second senior official, again speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the US already screens millions of travellers and "can certainly scale" the relatively smaller number of Syrian refugees.

"It will require us adapting and flexing, but I think it's well within our capacity," he said. 

PARIS — President Francois Hollande unveiled France's riposte to the Daesh terror group on Monday after its atrocities in Paris, vowing tough new anti-terror measures and intensified bombing of Syria in a historic speech to parliament.

Describing the coordinated attacks that killed 129 people as "acts of war", Hollande urged a global fightback to crush Daesh and said he would hold talks with his US and Russian counterparts on a new offensive.

Friday's "acts of war... were decided and planned in Syria, prepared and organised in Belgium [and] perpetrated on our soil with French complicity", Hollande told an extraordinary meeting of both houses of parliament in Versailles.

"The need to destroy Daesh ... concerns the entire international community," he told lawmakers, who burst into an emotional rendition of the La Marseillaise national anthem after his speech — only the second time in more than 150 years a French president has addressed a joint session of parliament.

On the domestic front, Hollande called for an extension of the state of emergency by three months and announced 8,500 new police and judicial jobs to help counter terrorism.

France and Belgium staged dozens of raids on suspected extremists as the manhunt continued for an eighth militant, including in a known radical hotspot in Brussels where some of the attackers are thought to have lived.

With emotions running high, thousands paused in the streets of Paris for a minute’s silence to remember those killed at nightspots and at the national stadium in the worst-ever attack on French soil.

Investigators identified two more extremists involved in the assault, including a Frenchman previously charged with planning a terror attack and a suicide bomber found with a Syrian passport, which has yet to be authenticated. 

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, speaking at a G20 conference in Turkey, said the attacks proved the need for an international anti-terror coalition.

“I spoke about this at the United Nations... and the tragic events that followed have confirmed that we were right,” he said.

US President Barack Obama, also in Turkey, said a new deal had been agreed with France to speed up intelligence sharing.

Rocket launcher 

During pre-dawn raids in the southeastern French city of Lyon, police found “an arsenal of weapons”, including a rocket launcher and Kalashnikov assault rifle.

More than 100 people have been placed under house arrest, 23 arrested and 31 weapons seized, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said.

As authorities scrambled to find those responsible, the grieving French tried to return to the humdrum of daily life.

Mountains of flowers and candles have been laid at the scenes of the attacks and in front of businesses that lost loved ones.

“We need to understand how this barbarism can exist and why France is paying this heavy price,” David Boy, a 52-year-old advertising agency boss said, his lips trembling as he lingered at one of the memorials on his way to work. 

Metro trains were packed with commuters, pupils returned to schools and museums reopened, although a national state of emergency remained in place.

A social media campaign urged everyone to visit cafes and bars on Tuesday night.

In the face of “barbarism... culture is our biggest shield and our artists our best weapon,” said Culture Minister Fleur Pellerin.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls steeled the nation for more bloodshed, telling RTL radio that more operations “are still being prepared, not only against France but other European countries too”.

Late on Sunday, French planes bombed the stronghold of the Daesh militants.

French jets hit a Daesh command post, a recruitment centre, a munitions depot and a training camp in Raqqa, northern Syria, and more raids were reported on Monday.

The Belgian connection 

The manhunt continued for Salah Abdeslam, one of the three brothers linked to the attacks. 

One brother blew himself up in the Bataclan and was identified from a severed finger, while the third was arrested in Belgium but released without charge.

The brothers lived in the rundown Brussels neighbourhood of Molenbeek, which has a reputation as a hotbed of militancy and where police have made several arrests.

Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian of Moroccan descent also from Molenbeek and thought to be fighting with Daesh in Syria, is considered a possible mastermind of the attacks.

Five of seven known attackers have been identified, but it is unclear if other gunmen fled after the outrage.

Two of the gunmen behind the bloodbath at the Bataclan theatre, where 89 people were killed, have been identified as Paris native Omar Ismail Mostefai and Samy Amimour.

A Turkish official said its police had twice warned France about Mostefai, who was one of 10,000 people tagged by French intelligence as an extremist.

Amimour was charged in France in 2012 for “conspiracy to commit terrorism” over a foiled plot to carry out an attack in Yemen and was wanted on a global arrest warrant after violating the terms of his judicial supervision. 

There are fears some of the assailants entered Europe as part of the huge influx of people fleeing Syria’s civil war, after a Syrian passport was found near the body of one suicide bomber at the Stade de France in the name of Ahmad Al Mohammad.

The document has yet to be verified and Serbia detained a migrant on Monday whose passport contained the same data.

Far-right French leader Marine Le Pen has already called for an “immediate halt” to the intake of migrants.

The attacks came less than 11 months after militants struck satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket, killing 17.

WARSAW — Poland's new right-wing, eurosceptic government was sworn in Monday signalling it would take a hard line on Europe's biggest migrant crisis since World War II — even floating the idea of sending Syrians back to "liberate" their country.

The new Cabinet observed a minute's silence for the victims of the worst-ever terror attacks in France at the swearing-in ceremony at Warsaw's presidential palace.

Earlier, Prime Minister Beata Szydlo led her Cabinet in laying flowers and lighting candles in front of the French embassy in memory of the at least 129 victims of Friday's attacks.

She is in the comfortable position of leading a majority government and therefore controlling parliament, thanks to her Law and Justice (PiS) Party's landmark victory in the October 25 election. 

She can also expect a helping hand from PiS-backed President Andrzej Duda. 

During the election campaign the party vowed to close Poland's doors to refugees and migrants and instead lend financial support to EU efforts at tackling the crisis. 

It also promised to hike welfare spending and taxes on banks and foreign-owned supermarkets. 

New Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski suggested Sunday that the hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees pouring into Europe could be trained to form an army and return to "liberate" their homeland. 

"Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have come to Europe recently. We can help them form an army," he said.

"Tens of thousands of young men disembark from their rubber dinghies with iPad in hand and instead of asking for drink or food, they ask where they can charge their cellphones.

"They can go to fight to liberate their country with our help."

Waszczykowski said he was trying to avoid a situation where "we send our soldiers to fight in Syria while hundreds of thousands of Syrians drink their coffee in [Berlin's] Unter den Linden" boulevard or in other European cities.

He insisted Poland would meet the commitments made by the previous liberal government to host more than 9,000 refugees in the framework of the EU's relocation plan.

Waszczykowski's reassurance came after a Saturday statement by the deputy minister for EU affairs, Konrad Szymanski, who said that because of the Paris terror attacks, Poland would not take in refugees under the hotly contested EU redistribution programme.

'Security guarantees' 

"The European Council's decisions, which we criticised, on the relocation of refugees and immigrants to all EU countries are part of European law," Szymanski wrote on right-leaning website wPolityce.pl.

But "after the tragic events of Paris we do not see the political possibility of respecting them," he said.

"Poland must retain complete control of its borders, as well as its asylum and migration policy."

Szymanski said that Friday's attacks in Paris were "directly" connected to both the migrant crisis and France's involvement in air strikes on Daesh positions.

A known eurosceptic, Szymanski later appeared to backtrack on his words, insisting Poland would only take in refugees "on the condition it gets security guarantees".

Szydlo, a 52-year-old coal miner's daughter, has vowed to "fix" Poland.

Priorities include a family allowance of 500 zloty (117 euros, $126) per child to boost low birth rates, lowering the pension age, increasing tax exemptions for lower income earners, tax cuts for small and medium businesses and tax hikes for banks and foreign-owned supermarkets. 

The conservatives also say they will create 1.2 million jobs at home to stem the flow of Poles to western EU states like Britain and Germany in search of jobs and a better life.

Despite a global push to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the PiS government has vowed to keep coal as Poland's main source of electricity. To do so, it wants to renegotiate its commitments on emissions cuts.

BERLIN — European populist and far-right leaders Monday seized on the militant attacks in Paris to demand the continent stem the record migrant influx, charging that terrorists could hide among the masses.

France's anti-immigration National Front leader Marine Le Pen called for an "immediate halt" to new migrants, while Germany's Islamophobic PEGIDA movement hoped to draw record numbers to its latest rally Monday evening.

Hungary's hardline Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has shut out refugees with razor-wire fences, said that "terrorists have exploited mass migration by mingling in the mass of people leaving their homes in the hope of a better life."

"We don't think that everyone is a terrorist, but no one can say how many terrorists have arrived already, how many are coming day by day," he told parliament in Budapest. 

From Poland to the Netherlands and as far as the US state of Alabama, politicians charged that extremists could be hiding among the masses fleeing conflict.

They pointed to the discovery of a Syrian passport near the body of one of the Paris suicide attackers, with French prosecutors saying his fingerprints matched those recorded in October in Greece, the main route for Europe's biggest migrant influx since World War II.

President Barack Obama warned against drawing a link between terrorism and refugees, after two US states said they would block or suspend a programme to resettle Syrian refugees within their borders.

"The people who are fleeing Syria are the most harmed by terrorism, they are the most vulnerable," Obama told a news conference in Turkey. 

"It is very important that we do not close our hearts to the victims of such violence and somehow start equating the issue of refugees with the issue of terrorism."

'New era started' 

In Germany, the year-old PEGIDA protest movement — short for Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident — was hoping to draw large crowds for their Monday protest in the eastern city of Dresden, having attracted their highest-ever turnout of 25,000 after the January attacks against the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris.

Its founder Lutz Bachmann urged followers to protest against "those who come here bring terror to the country", and against the government's welcoming stance that is expected to bring one million asylum-seekers to Germany this year.

In a weekend Facebook posting, Bachmann had even accused Chancellor Angela Merkel of sharing blame for the attacks.

In still traumatised France, far-right leader Le Pen's party said that its "fears and warnings of the possible presence of jihadists among the migrants entering our country" had been borne out.

Dutch anti-immigration politician Geert Wilders took to Twitter to say to the government: "Will you listen at last: close the borders!"

Germany's justice minister, Heiko Maas, also cautioned against drawing a link between refugees and perpetrators of the deadly Paris attacks, warning that Daesh could be trying to exploit the debate over Europe's migrant influx.

"We are aware that the IS [Daesh] is known to leave such false tracks behind to politicise and radicalise the issue over refugees in Europe," he said.

It was not just leaders of fringe protest groups, but also mainstream politicians who linked the attacks with the migrant wave.

Poland's incoming European Affairs Minister Konrad Szymanski said Saturday that Warsaw no longer considered an EU plan to redistribute refugees across Europe to be a "political possibility" in light of the Paris attacks.

In Germany's southern Bavaria state, the main gateway for arriving migrants, Markus Soeder, a leader of the conservative CSU Party, charged that "a new era has started. The time of uncontrolled and illegal immigration is over. Paris has changed everything."

A commentary on news site Spiegel Online said that since Friday's attacks, leaders of Germany's populist right "seem to be blowing their gaskets", and that "the most likely motive is fear".

It said that "it is one of Daesh's goals that Muslims in Europe feel marginalised and stigmatised, to make it more likely they can recruit them one day."