'We're off, it's started': Mobile message led French police to Abdelhamid Abaaoud

A discarded mobile phone found near the blood-soaked Bataclan concert hall led investigators to the cousin of the Paris attacks ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud.

A discarded mobile phone found near the blood-soaked Bataclan concert hall led investigators to the cousin of the Paris attacks ringleader – and then to the apartment where both died in a hail of bullets and explosions, authorities have said.

As a manhunt intensified for a fugitive connected to last Friday’s carnage that killed 129 people, details emerged about the operation that allowed authorities to zero in on Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the Belgian-Moroccan extremist said to have orchestrated the attacks in Paris and four plots thwarted earlier this year.