PARIS, (AP):Spain's interior minister says Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the alleged mastermind of the Paris attacks, had used Internet social networks to try to recruit women from Spain to join the Islamic State group.

Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz, speaking yesterday on Spain's Antena 3 television, said Abaaoud "had tried to recruit through social networks Spanish people, especially women, to join and travel to fight" for IS in combat zones.

He said this matched the extremists' campaign to recruit women to "repopulate" its self-declared caliphate in parts of Syria and Iraq.