We are at war with terrorism, want a large coalition against Islamic State: Francois Hollande
Paris: French President Francois Hollande says France is 'at war' against terrorism by the Islamic State group.
Hollande says he wants "large coalition" working together against IS militants to destroy a group that threatens the whole world and "commits massacres" in the Mideast.
Hollande says "we are at war." He was speaking in a televised address Wednesday after a seven-hour police siege on an apartment north of Paris where police suspected the mastermind of the deadly Paris attacks might have been.
Hollande says France will not "cede to fear" and is urging his compatriots to go back out to cafes and museums and live life to its fullest.
He says the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle just left to help French military operations in Syria against IS.
A woman blew herself up and a suspected jihadist was killed during a huge police assault in Paris targeting the suspected mastermind of last week's attacks in the capital.
Authorities arrested seven people, while five police officers suffered minor injuries in the operation which turned into a seven-hour stand-off between security forces and a group of people holed up in an apartment.
Gunfire first rang out in the darkness at around 4.00am (0300 GMT) in the streets close to where three suicide bombers had detonated their explosives outside the stadium at the start of Friday's attacks.
Read:
Woman blows herself up in Saint-Denis raid in Paris suburbs
Suspects had planned attack on Paris business district: sources
French police dog Diesel killed by jihadists during Paris raid
Men behind the deadly Paris attacks
How a happy-go-lucky student morphed into Belgium's most notorious jihadi
Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said telephone surveillance and witness reports "led us to believe" that Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected mastermind of Friday's series of attacks in Paris that killed 129 people, had been in the apartment.
However, Molins added it was too early to say if he was among those arrested or killed.
Abaaoud is an Islamic State fighter who was previously thought to be in Syria after fleeing raids in his native Belgium earlier this year.
