Here’s the latest on the police raid in the French suburb of Saint-Denis that left two terror suspects dead, seven arrests, a collapsed apartment building and body parts strewn on site after, according to neighbors in the area, more than an “hour of gunfire”. DNA tests are now being administered to determine whether or not the “mastermind” of Friday’s attacks in Paris, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, is one of the dismembered corpses.

According to Paris prosecutor Francois Molins, Wednesday’s raid began when Belgian and French intelligence agencies picked up phone communications that solidified their educated guess, based on data they already possessed: Abaaoud was indeed in France and, more specifically, in Saint-Denis.

An operation that ended at about noon in France began when more than 100 police officers “swarmed” the neighborhood that boasts the Stade de France sports stadium (one of the targets of Friday’s terrorist attacks) and first broke into on apartment (that had been surveilled since Tuesday) and eventually a nearby address on the same normally quiet, working-class street.

And that’s where the whole spectacle went down, one that left residents in the adjacent area shocked with visions of bullets through the area and the feeling of their homes quaking beneath their feet.

This from CNN:

Amid the drama, one female suspect killed herself at the scene by activating her suicide belt, the prosecutor’s office said. Another suspect died in a clash with police, with Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve later adding there could end up being more than those two deaths. As of Wednesday afternoon, seven — including three in one apartment, the person who lent the apartment to the suspected terrorists and his friend — ended up in custody from this operation alone.

Five French officers, meanwhile, suffered light wounds while a police dog died in the operation, according to police.

Officials and police also noted that the raid came “right on time”, as the attackers were “about to move on some kind of operation.” No further details have yet been released on what they were planning to do.

Earlier in the day, investigators had recovered phones from the terrorists used in Friday’s attacks. A text message from one of the phones read something along the lines of “Okay, we’re ready”.

Also, this, out of Turkey (via CNN):

Turkish police detained eight ISIS-linked suspects who’d arrived at an Istanbul airport from Casablanca, Turkish police said Wednesday, according to the semi-official Anadolu news agency. The eight Moroccans said they had booked a hotel in Turkey and were preparing to head to Germany — via Greece, Serbia and Hungary — the report added, pointing to a document seized by police laying out the travel route.

Stay tuned to the blog for the latest on this still-developing story.

UPDATE: