Obama calls ISIL a ‘scourge that threatens all of us’ as Hollande visits

Obama said his meeting with Hollande represented an important moment for the United States and France. He said the Paris violence was also an attack on the rest of the world. Hollande said France and the U.S. agreed to increase a joint response to ISIL, including efforts to strike at the group’s financial networks and retake ISIL-controlled territory in Iraq and Syria.

Hollande was scheduled to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday and with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Thursday.

The mission to defeat ISIL ran into complications Tuesday, after officials in Ankara said Turkish fighter jets shot down a Russian warplane that had violated Turkish airspace.

Obama said Tuesday that "Turkey, like every country, has a right to defend its territory and airspace." He added that while details of the incident are still unknown, all sides must "take measures to discourage any kind of escalation." 

A U.S. official told Al Jazeera that the Russian jet entered Turkish airspace for “only a matter of seconds.” According to the official, the Russian jet crossed a section of Turkey less than 2 miles wide, taking about 20 seconds. 

Hollande has faced a tough challenge in getting Obama to agree to a partnership with Moscow. The U.S. is deeply skeptical of Putin’s motivations, given the Russian leader’s long-standing support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Obama has resisted calls to either change or significantly escalate his approach toward ISIL and instead has focused mainly on getting other countries to offer more counterintelligence as well as humanitarian and military assistance.

Hollande’s Washington visit comes amid the discovery of clues in the investigation of the attacks in France and as Brussels entered a fourth day of lockdown over Belgian fears of an imminent threat. 

As Hollande met with Obama in the Oval Office, the manhunt continued in Europe for Belgian-born Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in the Paris attacks.

In Paris, meanwhile, prosecutor François Molins said that Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the organizer of the Nov. 13 attacks, planned to detonate a suicide bomb at La Défense, the capital’s business hub around Nov. 18. On that day, however, he and two others were killed in an assault by French police at an apartment in St.-Denis, a suburb north of Paris.

Molins also announced on Tuesday that the man who rented his apartment to Abaaoud, Jawad Bendaoud, was placed under arrest for criminal association related to a terrorist enterprise, according to French media.

He was taken into custody on Monday moments after giving a television interview in which he acknowledged he had given shelter to two of the alleged Paris attackers and said he didn't know who they were or what they planned.

In the interview, Bendaoud, 29, told BFM television, “I didn’t know they were terrorists. I was asked to do a favor. I did a favor, sir.”

In other developments, Brussels announced on Monday it will stay on its highest level of alert at least until next Monday, with Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel warning that the threat “remains serious and imminent,” though schools and the subway system will reopen Wednesday. The security measures include citywide patrols of armed soldiers and police, not seen in Brussels for two decades. 

An eerie atmosphere hung over the city, with soldiers in camouflage patrolling everywhere from railway stations to EU institutions. The only activity downtown on Monday saw deliverymen offloading crates for near-empty shops as construction workers hammered together stalls for a Christmas market meant to open on Friday.

With wire services