paris attacks
© Jay Directo/AFP/Getty
Some 300 people were killed or injured in last week's terror attacks in Paris. We're told that six of the terrorists blew themselves up: two during the police raid on the Bataclan theater, three outside or near the Stade de France, and one at the Voltaire restaurant. Here's a timeline of the bombings, adapted from the Guardian's summary of the timeline provided by Paris prosecutor Francois Molins:
9:20pm One victim was killed when the first explosion went off in Saint Denis near the Stade de France during a football match between France and Germany. The body of a terrorist was found at the scene wearing a suicide belt filled with shrapnel.

9:30pm A second explosion went off outside the Stade de France. The body of another suicide bomber was discovered at the scene with a similar explosive belt.
Bilal Hadfi, 20 years old and thought to have fought with ISIS in Syria after becoming radicalized last year, and Ahmad Al Mohammad, the 25-year-old Syrian who reportedly passed through Greece and Serbia in October and whose passport was found on or near his body, have been identified by French authorities as the two suicide bombers described above. However, a day after French authorities 'confirmed' that the man was indeed Al Mohammad, Serbian police arrested a man possessing a passport identical to that found at the Stade - only the photograph is different, suggesting that one or both of the passports are forged. Was the man by which the passport was found the same man who used this passport to enter Greece and Serbia?
9:40pm One person was seriously injured when a suicide explosive, similar to those used in the other attacks, was detonated inside the Voltaire restaurant on Boulevard Voltaire in the 11th district of Paris.
This bomber has been identified as Ibrahim Abdeslam, the 31-year-old French-Belgian who reportedly rented the black Seat car, and whose brother, Salah (who rented the black Polo car), is currently being pursued by European authorities. (The latest reports placed him in the Neudorf neighborhood of Strasbourg, but he was not found by police.) His other brother, Mohammed, was among the seven individuals arrested in a police raid over the weekend in Belgium. He was later released, along with four others, and gave this statement denying knowledge of his brothers' involvement in the attacks. The two others are being detained under terrorism charges.
9:40pm 89 people were shot dead and "many" injured when three armed men took hostages and opened fire into the crowd during a rock concert at Le Bataclan. The attackers were heard mentioning Syria and Iraq during the massacre. They arrived at the venue in a black Polo car.
Two of these three have been identified so far:

1) Omar Ismal Mostefai, a 29-year-old French-Algerian who reportedly travelled to Syria in late 2013. Turkey says he entered Turkey in 2013, with no record of him leaving, and that they notified France in December 2014 and June 2015 about him. The only response from the French authorities was an information request sent on Saturday, November 14, the day after the terror attacks.

2) Samy Animour, a 28-year-old Frenchman who had been detained in October 2012 on suspicion of associating with terrorists. He was held for four days after allegedly planning to visit Yemen. He reportedly violated his parole in September 2013 by travelling to Syria, presumably to fight for the Islamic State.
9:53pm Third explosion took place on Rue de la Coquerie, near the Stade de France. The body of a third suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt was found at the scene.

12:20am The three terrorists at Le Bataclan were killed. One was shot dead by French police, the other two blew themselves up.
The three terrorists who attacked the concert-goers at the Bataclan showed a degree of murderous 'professionalism', coldly executing hostages before blowing themselves up during the police raid, nearly two hours after they began their attack. According to one survivor, Massimiliano Natalucci, the shooting only lasted for the initial 15-20 minutes and started up again during the police raid, raising the question: what were the terrorists doing for the intervening hour and twenty minutes? Natalucci says he got a really good look at one of the terrorist's faces. Hopefully, once French police have released photographs of all the suspects, he will be able to positively identify the man he saw.

Oddly, there was a report of a woman assisting the terrorists in the Bataclan. The report hasn't received any follow-up in the days since the attacks:
Speaking on Europe 1, a couple of spectators said they saw a woman among the killers at the Bataclan. The two witnesses also say they saw three terrorists on site - not four. Three weapons and three bodies have also been found on site inside the concert hall. The two witnesses said that the woman in the team was unarmed.
Who was this woman? The only other mention of a woman came early on November 18. During a police raid in St Denis, 2 km north of the Stade de France, and said to be related to the search for Salah, a woman reportedly died after blowing herself up. The raid is still ongoing, and there are reports of at least 7 explosions, an hour of gunfire, at least 5 police injured, 5 arrests made (including the man who rented the rooms to the Belgians and a woman friend of his), and one suspect killed in addition to the woman.

In contrast to the Bataclan terrorists' professionalism, the other four suicide bombers appear to have utterly failed in their 'mission'. In a total of four attacks, they managed to kill a total of one person, and injure another, in addition to themselves. The first Stade de France bomber reportedly had a ticket to the game, but his suicide belt was discovered during a frisk and he detonated the explosive while backing away from security. Not only did they fail to get into the game (ostensibly their target), they seem to have just blown themselves up without targeting anyone else. Why was this so?

The terrorists who targeted the restaurants and bars arguably demonstrated an even higher level of professionalism than the Bataclan bombers. Here's the Guardian timeline of the shootings:
9:25pm 15 people were killed and 10 injured at Le Carillon bar and Le Petit Cambodge restaurant in Rue Alibert in the city's 10th district. Terrorists armed with kalashnikovs were seen pulling up in a black Seat car before opening fire. There are reports of 1 or more shooters, and 1 or 2 cars (including a Ford Focus). One witness said the driver looked very young, 18-20 years old.

9:32pm Five people died and eight were injured in a shooting outside La Bonne Biere bar in the 11th district. The gunmen arrived in the same car and armed with similar weapons to the first shooting.
A Danish eyewitness said one of the shooters at La Bonne Biere was very professional and shot his Kalashnikov left-handed, in bursts of 3-4 shots, "fully intentional": "Everything he was wearing was tight, either boots or shoes and the trousers were tight, the jumper he was wearing was tight, no zippers or collars. Everything was toned black. If you think of what a combat soldier looks like, that is it - just without the webbing. Just a man in military uniform, black jumper, black trousers, black shoes or boots and a machine gun." The gunman described is presumably still at large, unless the team involved in the string of shootings was the same as the one that proceeded to the Bataclan.
9:36pm 19 people were killed and nine injured at La Belle Equipe restaurant on Rue de Charonne in the 11th district. A black Seat car was spotted at the scene and the gunmen were again armed with kalashnikovs. Again, there are reports of one gunman or more gunmen, and other vehicles.
The following report, from the UK Mirror, has not been followed up on or mentioned by other news agencies. Rather than the Seat car that would link the attack at the Belle Equipe to the the other attacks, it mentions a new black Mercedes with tinted windows, and a description of the terrorist that is very much at odds with the men identified thus far:
Mahoud Admo said: "The gunman showed no emotion at all as he began spraying bullets into the ­diners. He just kept reloading his machine gun and firing, without saying a thing.
...
Mr Admo, 26, who was staying at the Salvation Army hostel in Rue de Charonne opposite the Le Belle Equipe, told how gunmen executed patrons in a drive-by attack.

"At about 9.30pm a new looking black Mercedes pulled up outside with dark tinted windows at the back and the passenger and driver windows down. I could clearly see the passenger's face as he was not ­wearing a hat or mask.

"As soon as the car stopped he quietly opened the door and got out in front of the restaurant. That is when I saw he was ­holding a machine gun that was resting on his hip. I could not take in what I was witnessing. People outside spotted the shooter approaching with his gun and tried to run inside but he shot them down in the doorway.

"Then people inside moved ­forward to see what was happening and he sprayed more bullets into them. I was trying to catch them on my camera phone but the gunman saw the light on my mobile and I ducked down behind the wall as they fired at my hotel. The gunman calmly reloaded his weapon several times. He then shot up at the windows in the street to make sure nobody was filming anything or taking photographs. It lasted over six minutes.

"He fired lots of bullets. He was white, clean shaven and had dark hair neatly trimmed. He was dressed all in black accept for a red scarf. "The shooter was aged about 35 and had an extremely muscular build, which you could tell from the size of his arms. He looked like a weightlifter. He was not wearing gloves and his face was expressionless as he walked towards the bar.

"The driver had opened his door shortly before the shooting began and stood up with his arm and a machine gun rested on the roof of the car. He stood there with his foot up in the door acting as a lookout. I would describe him as tall, with dark hair and also quite muscular.

"They looked like soldiers or mercenaries and carried the whole thing out like a military operation. It was clear that they were both very heavily armed and the gunman was carrying several magazines on him. They both then coolly sat back in the car and sped off in the direction of the Bataclan Theatre."
A brief report from the Independent also describes one terrorist as "white":
Information emerging from the scene indicates one of the attackers at the stadium may have been French. Witnesses described one attacker as "white", "European type" according to BFMtv.
Pepe Escobar summed up some of the above observations nicely:
The Stade de France team featured absolute patsies trying to enter a high-visibility football match in a heavily policed stadium wearing a suicide vest. Just expendable "martyrs" - "Syrian passport" and all.

The Bataclan team featured calm, relatively proficient shooters, but still martyrs. They knew a hostage situation, in France, could only finish with their "martyrdom". Less expendable, but still expendable.

The heart of the matter is the drive-by team. Or "teams". The investigation seems to be clueless about them. The killers at La Belle Équipe arrived on a black Mercedes, according to witnesses. There is no mention of this Mercedes anywhere. The killers were ultra-pro, muscular, methodical - and white.

These are the non-expendables. The high-priced mercenaries. While the whole media circus spreads from Grenoble and Toulouse to Brussels and even Raqqa, they have simply vanished without a trace. No one knows who they are. No one knows who hired them. Hardly social network jihadi al-Baljiki.
paris attackers
(Clockwise from top left) Abdeslam Salah (at large), Bilal Hadfi, Ahmad Almohamad, Abdelhamid Abaaoud (alleged ringleader), Samy Amimour, Omar Mostefai
Now, French police are reporting a ninth suspect after reportedly finding video footage of one of the shootings, in which three men (one said to be Brahim Abdeslam) are visible in the black Seat. Will this man match any of the descriptions given by eyewitnesses?

But what about that 18-20-year-old driver? It couldn't have been 20-year-old Hadfi, who reportedly blew himself at the stadium up either 5 minutes before or after the shootings started. And what about the Le Figaro report of two of the dead terrorists being 15 and 18 years old? So far, 5 of the 7 terrorists have been identified by authorities, but except for Hadfi, they are all in their mid twenties to early thirties: 25, 28, 29, 31. If Le Figaro's report is accurate, at least one of the remaining 2 terrorists should be identified as being in his mid teens.

The stories above suggest several possibilities:

1) The reports themselves are false, either a result of unreliable eyewitnesses (unlikely) or journalistic novelizing (more likely)
2) The identities released by authorities are not the identities of all of the men (and woman?) involved in the attacks. Survivors of the attacks should be able to confirm or deny this, as the terrorists did not wear masks, and several got good looks at their faces
3) There were more than 8 terrorists involved in the attacks

Regarding possibility #3, perhaps the Iraqis, who warned France the day before that ISIS was planning attacks, know something?
Speaking anonymously to AP, six senior Iraqi officials confirmed the information in the message, and four of those officials said they specifically warned France of a possible attack. Two officials told AP that France was warned beforehand of further details that the country's authorities have not made public.

The officials said the Paris attacks appear to have been planned in Raqqa, Syria - ISIS's de-facto capital - where the attackers planned specifically for the operation. After their training, the attackers traveled to France where they met with members of a sleeper cell who helped them carry out the deadly attacks. A total of 24 people were reportedly involved in the operation: 19 attackers and five others in charge of planning and logistics.