A Cebuana who works in Paris said the sound of gunfire and explosions a few meters from where she lives are part of ongoing efforts to hunt down suspected terrorists behind Friday’s deadly attacks.
Susan Veloso-Petelet, 49, said police snipers raided an apartment hoping to find Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected brains of the November 13 attacks, as well as his cohorts.
“We were advised to stay home. No choice but to heed their advice,” Petelet said in a chat message to Cebu Daily News.
Susan Veloso-Petelet of Medellin, Cebu has been living in Paris for 25 years.
Patelet, a native of Medellin town, north Cebu, has been living in Paris for 25 years and works as a language interpreter for police precincts.
She said she was awakened at 4:30 a.m. by gunfire and explosions across the street where her family lives in Saint Denis, a suburb close to Paris.
“Police snipers were conducting a raid,” she said.
At past 8 a.m., gunfire was again heard in another assault by law enforcers. Residents living in the next street were evacuated, she said.
As she chatted online, “five suspected terrorists were arrested and two dead — a female suicide bomber and a passerby,” she said.
The Cebuana said lights in the Eiffel Tower were back last Monday night but were switched off for security reasons.
When Friday night’s attack happened, she had just arrived home from work.
“I was just five hundred meters away from where the first explosion was heard,” she recalled. One of the targets, the Stade De France, is near her place. Friday’s carnage left 129 people dead and 359 wounded.
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