A woman suicide bomber blew herself up and another militant died yesterday in a police raid that sources said had foiled a jihadi plan to hit Paris’s business district, La Defense, days after attacks that killed 129 across the French capital.

Police raided an apartment in the Paris suburb of St Denis in a hunt for Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian Islamist militant accused of masterminding the bombings and shootings, but more than 12 hours later it was still unclear if they had found him.

A source close to the investigation said the dead woman might have been Mr Abaaoud’s cousin. The interior ministry said forensic experts were looking to see whether a third person had died during the pre-dawn raid, indicating the rare violence of the confrontation that shredded the third floor apartment.

Seven people were arrested in the operation, including three who were pulled from the residence in the heart of St Denis, which had its windows blown out and its facade scarred by bullets and rocket blasts.

“It is impossible to tell you who was arrested. We are in the process of verifying that,” Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said at the end of the seven-hour police raid.

Mr Molins said the assault was ordered after phone taps and surveillance operations led police to believe that Abaaoud might have been in St Denis, near to the soccer stadium which was one of the targets last Friday.

Investigators believe the attacks – the worst atrocity in France since World War II – was set in motion from Syria, with Islamist 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.

“We could see bullets flying and laser beams out of the window. There were explosions. You could feel the whole building shake,” said 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. Three police officers and a passerby were injured in the assault. A police dog was also killed.

We could see bullets flying and laser beams out of the window. There were explosions. You could feel the whole building shake

Islamic State, 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 Islamic State 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.

A member of French judicial police inspects the apartment raided by French police special forces in Saint-Denis, near Paris, yesterday. Photo: Reuters

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

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 planning and executing the deadly mission.

French authorities said yesterday 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 soccer 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 yesterday morning, officials had said Mr Abaaoud was in Syria. He grew up in Brussels, but media said he moved to Syria in 2014 to fight with Islamic State.

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.