French Officials Trying to Determine If Abdelhamid Abaaoud Died in Saint-Denis Raid (VIDEO)

The Telegraph UK has this breathtaking headline right now, "Paris attacks: Terrorist mastermind Abdelhamid Abaaoud 'killed' in French police raid, reports claim • Prosecutor reveals incredible details of siege."

But the Wall Street Journal's circumspect, "French Trying to Determine If Mastermind of Paris Attacks Was Killed in Raid":

PARIS—French police were working to establish late Wednesday whether the presumed mastermind of the Paris terror attacks was among the dead after police rained more than 5,000 rounds of ammunition on a suspected safe house in an assault that lasted several hours.

At least two people were killed and eight others detained after a raid that turned the gritty northern Paris suburb of Saint-Denis into a heavy combat zone. The gunbattle—in which more than 100 police officers took part and one suspect, a woman, blew herself up with a suicide vest—was so fierce that the ceiling of the besieged apartment collapsed.

The operation was launched following a tip that a Belgian-born Islamic State operative Abdelhamid Abaaoud, suspected of being the architect of Friday’s Paris killings and other terrorist plots in Europe, was in the apartment at the time. French officials said that Mr. Abaaoud had been planning subsequent attacks on targets such as Paris’s La Defense business district.

He wasn’t among those detained in Wednesday’s raid, officials said. It also wasn’t clear whether he was among the fatalities. Paris prosecutor François Molins said French authorities haven’t conclusively identified those killed in the assault and are still examining the bodies.

If his death is established, Mr. Abaaoud’s presence so close to the scene of the Paris attacks would deepen concerns about Europe’s security, and raise questions over how an Islamic State operative who featured prominently on Western military’s target lists slipped back through borders to sow terror in the heart of the Continent. Until recently, Western security officials had thought Mr. Abaaoud was in Syria.

Wednesday’s fighting began before dawn on the Rue du Corbillon, a narrow street in working-class Saint-Denis, which has a large Muslim population. “It was an extremely difficult operation,” Mr. Molins said.

Police acted on a tip they initially received late on Monday. It took the French security services a day to verify the information using telephone and banking records, Mr. Molins said.

At 4:20 a.m., police RAID and BRI special forces converged on a third-floor apartment. The assault team faced an immediate setback: The explosive charges that they placed at the apartment’s armored door didn’t immediately succeed in breaching it, giving the terrorists inside time to regroup and mount a fierce resistance.

“I first thought that maybe France had won the soccer game, and that it was firecrackers. Then I understood that something really bad was happening,” said Bibikoresha Lallmahamood, 43, who lives a few blocks away...

Still more.