A seven-hour siege on an apartment in a northern Paris suburb on Wednesday resulted in the arrest of seven suspects connected to the Paris terror attacks and the deaths of two others.

The New York Times reports French police raided a home in Saint-Denis in search of 27-year-old Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian national and suspected mastermind of the Paris attacks that left 129 people dead.

Police cordoned off the area early Wednesday morning as they prepared to enter the third floor apartment where five suspects were hiding.

CNN reporter Atika Shubert described a group of police in masks and balaclavas forming a perimeter around the building. A number of explosions came soon after.

One woman opened fire on authorities before killing herself with an explosive vest. Another suspect was killed through a combination of gunfire and grenade detonation, according to Paris prosecutor Francois Molins.

The three other suspects in the apartment were arrested, along with two others "hiding in the rubble" and another two outside the apartment. It is unknown if Abaaoud was in the apartment at the time of the siege.

"It is currently impossible to give you the identities of the people who were arrested, which are being verified," Molins said to reporters. "Everything will be done to determine who is who."

Abaaoud was originally believed to have been in Syria, but recent evidence alerted authorities to a Saint-Denis apartment near the Stade de France stadium where three suicide bombers struck last Friday.

"A lot of work was done as part of this investigation, which made it possible to obtain, through phone records, surveillance and testimony, elements that could have suggested that the man named Abaaoud was potentially in an apartment used for plotting in St.-Denis," Molins said.

According to USA Today, apartment owner Jawad Ben Dow claimed that he didn't know he was housing terrorists, and that he did it on a favor for a friend. He was one of the suspects taken into custody. Five policemen sustained minor injuries in the raid, and a police dog known as "Diesel" (pictured below) was killed.