Gunfire and explosions rocked the Saint-Denis area in the north of the city near the Stade de France stadium from before dawn as terrified residents were evacuated or told to stay in their homes.

Authorities arrested seven people and five police officers suffered minor injuries in the operation - a seven-hour stand-off between security forces and a group of people holed up in an apartment.

Black-clad elite police was seen hauling away a naked suspect in the streets near where three suicide bombers blew themselves up outside the football stadium at the start of Friday's attacks.

After the raid white-suited forensic experts swarmed the building as police tried to verify if Abdelhamid Abaaoud the suspected mastermind of Friday's attacks in Paris that killed 129 people had been in the apartment.

Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said a probe into the attacks allowed police 'to obtain telephonic surveillance and witness testimony which led us to believe that Abaaoud was likely to be in an... apartment in Saint-Denis'.

However Molins added it was too early to say if he was among those arrested or killed.

Abaaoud is an Islamic State (IS) militant who was previously thought to be in Syria after fleeing raids in his native Belgium earlier this year.

Residents of the Paris suburb said they had been caught in a terrifying exchange of fire.

Hayat (26) had been leaving a friend's apartment where she had spent the night when the shots erupted.'I heard gunfire' she said. 'I could have been hit by a bullet. I never thought terrorists could have hid here.'

The raid came after footage from the scene of one of Paris attacks revealed a ninth suspect may have taken part. It is known that seven were killed in the carnage on Friday most after detonating suicide belts. It was not clear if the ninth man was one of two suspected accomplices detained in Belgium or was still on the run potentially with 26 year old fugitive Frenchman Salah Abdeslam who took part in the attacks with his suicide-bomber brother Brahim.

Police also carried out multiple raids in southwest France. The operations were part of an anti-terrorism strategy but not directly linked to the Paris attacks an investigator said.

'Don't give in to fear'

French President Francois Hollande praised security forces for their role in 'the particularly perilous and taxing' operation which he said proved the country was involved in a 'war against terrorism'.

He told a gathering of mayors that municipal police would be given more weapons and equipment from the stock of the national police. But Hollande urged the nation not to 'give in to fear' or excessive reactions in the wake of the attacks. 'No anti-Semitic or anti-Muslim act can be tolerated' he said.

The body representing Muslims in France said it would ask all 2500 mosques in the country to condemn 'all forms of violence or terrorism' in prayers this Friday. The message will condemn such acts 'unambiguously' the French Muslim Council said.

France is still under a state of emergency which lawmakers will vote to extend on Thursday and Friday.

Strikes in Syria

As police stepped up the hunt for the fugitives French and Russian jets pounded IS targets in the group's Syrian stronghold of Raqa for a third consecutive day.

A monitoring group said the French and Russian airstrikes had killed at least 33 IS militants in the last 72 hours.

France and Russia have vowed merciless retaliation for the Paris attacks and last month's bombing of a Russian airliner over the Egyptian Sinai peninsula which killed 229 people and was also claimed by IS.

The French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle steamed from the southern port of Toulon on Wednesday heading for the eastern Mediterranean to participate in intensified airstrikes against IS targets.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that 'it's necessary to establish direct contact with the French and work with them as allies'.

The attacks have galvanised international resolve to destroy the extremist group and end Syria's more than four year civil war while potentially restoring ties between Russia and France that had collapsed since last year's Ukraine crisis.

Hollande will meet Putin in Moscow on November 26 two days after seeing US President Barack Obama in Washington.

Sign of nervousness

In a sign of the nervousness gripping Europe after Friday's carnage a football match between Germany and the Netherlands in Hanover was cancelled on Tuesday and the crowd evacuated after police acted on a 'serious' bomb threat.

France has invoked a previously unused European Union article to ask member states for help in its mission to fight back against the Islamic State organisation which received unanimous backing from Brussels.