Teacher Gregoire Badufle says he was shaking with fear as he heard gunshots in his street during an early-morning police raid on suspected terrorists in the north of Paris.
The 42-year-old was asleep with his wife and four children in their apartment in the suburb of Saint-Denis when gunfire woke him some time after 4am on Wednesday.
They had to stay locked inside for hours as a confrontation between police and a group of suspects in an apartment down the street unfolded.
The city prosecutor Francois Molins said the suspected mastermind of the Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was not among a number of people arrested in the raid.
Molins also confirmed while at least two bodies were found in the apartment in Saint-Denis after the shootout with police, they have not yet been identified.
All Wednesday morning a large part of Saint-Denis was in lockdown, with hundreds of soldiers and police on guard with submachine guns, rifles and pistols at cordoned-off streets.
After midday police reduced the cordon along La Rue de la Republique, allowing Badufle to venture from his apartment for the first time since he opened a window to hear gunshots earlier in the morning.
He told AAP that having done military service he knew the sound of gunfire and could make out two different types, that of police weapons then perhaps a Kalashnikov in reply.
The teacher said he determined to stay calm "because we think about the kids, but after that you are shaking a bit, because it was so close".
Badufle said it was particularly worrying for him because two of his children go to the school right next to the building that police raided and it was disturbing to think they had been walking past terrorists.
Mihoubi Myrian was in her apartment nearby when she heard the gunfire and on Wednesday morning played a phone recording of them to AAP, with single shots being heard first then rapid bursts of gunfire.
The 24-year-old said she felt "very scared" because she didn't know what was happening and whether it was safe.
She said she was still worried and it was disturbing to think that "some terrorists are your neighbours".
Officials said police had been hunting Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian Islamist militant accused of ordering Friday night's terror attacks in Paris that killed 129 people and left more than 350 injured.
Five police officers suffered minor injuries in Wednesday's operation and seven people were arrested, officials said.
Television footage on Wednesday showed two teams of police special assault officers dressed in black advancing along a wall towards the apartment as volleys of gunfire are heard.
Footage also showed the targeted apartment with blasted-out windows and what appeared to be bullet damage on an outside wall.
Saint-Denis is near the national sports stadium where three militants detonated suicide vests during Friday night's attacks, killing themselves and one other person.
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