French authorities: As many as 20 people may have planned the Paris attacks

A memorial in Paris.
(Image credit: Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images)

French officials believe as many as 20 people across Europe may have been involved in plotting and executing the deadly Paris attacks that left at least 132 people dead and hundreds injured.

Of the eight known assailants, six were killed when they detonated suicide belts, and one was shot and killed by police. Two European intelligence officials told The Washington Post that at least two of those attackers spent time in Syria, including 20-year-old French national Bilal Hadfi, who went to Belgium after leaving the Middle East, then fell off the radar. A senior intelligence official requesting anonymity admitted to the Post that mistakes were made when it came to tracking suspected homegrown terrorists: "That so many people, some of whom had been known to police, had been able to plot such a large attack, using suicide explosive belts, weapons, without the intelligence services knowing — that's a major failure of the intelligence services."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.