all right. obviously we re having ben, if you can hear me, we re having a little bit of trouble with your signal there. and it s not a great signal. we re going to try to get it fixed and see if we can get ben back on the phone with a better sfal. b signal. you re looking at live pictures of saint-denis outside of the apartment building where police had conducted these early-morning raids. it all started at about 4:20 this morning. the alleged target was a man named abdelhamid abaaoud, the alleged mastermind of the attacks from friday. this is a guy authorities had been searching for since friday, and they believed was potentially inside this apartment building in saint-denis, france. this is just a hop, skip and a juch jump away from the stade de france where the france/germany soccer game was going on on friday night when those attacks began. so not too far from that area,
principal safe house? which means that there could be other weapons, ammunitions, indicators in the logistics pipeline that brought the terrorists and the weapons into paris? or was it the bomb factory which would actually be the gold standard here, the place where they actually built the weapons that they used in the suicide attacks, and that will give a treasure trove. that would be a treasure trove of intelligence. so the french are going to take it very slow, and they re going to go through that place with a fine-tooth comb, and they ll be sharing that with international intelligence agencies because this could occur in other countries or may actually be in planning for other countries as well in other parts of france. there was some video that ben plesser who s an nbc news producer who travels with richard engel, he had showed us a little bit earlier of them following some of the police officers who suddenly sort of parted from the apartment there, and then all of a sudden picke
a suicide belt that exploded very early on around 4:20, 4:30 this morning in saint-denis there inside that apartment building, setting off gunfire exchange and, of course, this raid continued. it looks now at this hour 10:00 saint-denis time there outside of paris, france, that they are beginning to do some forensic work, that they are setting up a little bit of recovery after this raid went down for hours and hours in the early morning hours. and i want now, if i can, to bring in ben plesser who travels with richard engel. you all have been to different ends of the earth. and i wonder if you can give us a little bit of an idea here of being there in france and how different this was to see something like this go down outside of paris. yes, you re right. we spend a lot of our time in the middle east and other sort
attacks that happened on friday. they ve been hunting him for a little while. but it s unclear whether or not he was in the apartment they re raiding, and if he was, whether or not he s one of the fatalities. one of the fatalities is a woman wearing a suicide bomber, wearing a vest or a belt which she exploded. but gunfire all night, starting about 4:30 paris time. i want to bring in malcolm nance, veteran u.s. intelligence officer joining us here on msnbc. i want to ask you about this, i just talked with ben plesser, nbc news producer who travels with richard engel. they were on scene this morning, looking at the live pictures now, much different than 4:30, on 5:30 when the gunfire was sustained. now it seems they re at ease little bit. can you give us an idea what they might be doing? sure.
there you hear it, the gunfire, sustained gunfire, starting at about 4:20 local time there. we re joined now by ben plesser, an nbc news producer who travels with richard engel. and ben, i understand you were on scene there as this all was going down. give us a little bit of an idea of the surroundings there and what was happening. yes, we arrived at this [ inaudible ] and there was gunfire kind of echoing throughout the apartment. police by this point [ inaudible ] very aggressively.