UPDATE: French police raiding apartment where several Paris attack suspects hiding

SAINT-DENIS, France (AP) — Heavily armed French SWAT teams swooped in Wednesday and neutralized a cell that was planning to launch new attacks, firing 5,000 rounds during an hours-long battle that left at least two people dead, including a woman who exploded an explosives belt, a prosecutor said.

The raid had targeted the suspected planner of the attacks, 27-year-old Abdelhamid Abaaoud, but his fate remained unclear.

Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said the identities of the dead were still being investigated, but that neither Abaoud nor the fugitive attacker Salah Abdeslam was in custody.

“At this time, I’m not in a position to give a precise and definitive number for the people who died, nor their identities, but there are at least two dead people,” he told reporters.

Molins said heavily armed police squads initially were thwarted by a reinforced door to the apartment in the Saint-Denis neighborhood north of Paris and faced nearly incessant fire as they worked to enter.

Earlier, the prosecutor said the raid was launched after information from tapped telephone conversations, surveillance and witness accounts indicated that Abaaoud might be in a safe house in the Saint-Denis suburb.

Investigators have identified Abaaoud, a Belgian of Moroccan descent, as the chief architect of Friday’s attacks in Paris, which killed 129 people and wounded 368 others.

A U.S. official briefed on intelligence matters said Abaaoud was a key figure in an Islamic State external operations cell that U.S. intelligence agencies have been tracking for months.

Abaaoud is believed to have escaped to Syria after a January police raid in Belgium, but he has bragged in Islamic State propaganda of his ability to move back and forth between Europe and Syria undetected.

The site of Wednesday’s raid is just over a mile (less than two kilometers) from the Stade de France soccer stadium; three suicide bombers blew themselves up outside the stadium during an international soccer match Friday.

They were one of three teams of attackers who also targeted a rock concert at the Bataclan theater as well popular night spots in a trendy Paris neighborhood. The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the carnage, which has left France in mourning and on edge.

On Wednesday, residents of Paris’ Saint-Denis neighborhood were shocked awake by an explosion at around 4:20 a.m.

Amine Guizani said the blast was followed by the sound of grenades and automatic gunfire.

“It was continuous. It didn’t stop,” he said. “It lasted from 4:20 until 5:30. It was a good hour. I couldn’t say how many shots were fired, but it was probably 500. Hundreds, definitely. There were maybe 10 explosions.”

Police cordoned off an area around the building in a narrow street lined with low-rise buildings. Riot police cleared people from the streets, pointing guns at residents to move them off the roads.