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Charlie Hebdo attack



A ruthless enemy, hostages and trail of murder: France’s worst nightmare









After three days on the run, jihadi brothers who had brought terror to Paris were cut down in a hail of police bullets. Nearby, four shoppers lay dead in a Jewish supermarket


• Five killed in Paris as manhunt for gunmen ends














Members of the French anti-terror force RAID escort hostages away from the kosher supermarket in Porte de Vincennes. Photograph: Abaca / Barcroft Media




Kim Willsher in Dammartin-en-Goële, 
Jon Henley and 
Anne Penketh in Paris and 
Luke Harding


Friday 9 January 2015 16.24 EST







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The end came shortly before dusk on Friday. There was a flash of orange and the unmistakable rattle of automatic gunfire. From the roof of a printing works in the small town of Dammartin-en-Goële white smoke billowed. An operation by French police special forces – three commandos in black appeared briefly in the gloom – had ended in hard-won success.
Lying dead outside the building were Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, who had emerged, guns blazing, before being cut down in a hail of bullets. The two brothers had been at the centre of a massive manhunt since Wednesday, when they stormed the offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo, shooting dead 10 people and two policemen, one murdered in the street with a clinical shot to the head.
The raid came after a day of extraordinary drama in France, and a second siege which played out on the terrified streets of Paris. Within minutes of the Dammartin explosions, police stormed a kosher supermarket in the Porte de Vincennes area. Another gunman – 32-year-old Amédy Coulibaly – had taken shoppers hostage there on Friday lunchtime. Coulibaly was part of the same jihadi cell as the Kouachis, and he reportedly demanded the safe passage of his friends in the printing works. There were loud booms as commandos in Paris went in straight through the front door. A few heart-stopping minutes later they emerged, leading – and in one case carrying – a party of dazed, shaken survivors. Coulibaly had been shot dead.
But then came news that four hostages had been shot dead too, with four critically wounded. Police officials said the hostages had died at the beginning of the Paris siege, when Coulibaly opened fire inside the building with a Kalashnikov. It was a deeply dispiriting conclusion to three days of carnage in and around the French capital. The numbers told their own doleful story: 17 people dead, including a policewoman shot dead by Coulibaly on Thursday, as well as the three gunmen. Many other civilians had been injured.
The twin operations marked the end of a rollercoaster 72 hours, during which the French authorities and security forces had frequently appeared helpless and buffeted by fast-moving events. After the massacre inside the magazine offices of Charlie Hebdo, the police mounted one of France’s biggest ever searches. The brothers had fled north, hijacking a Renault Clio. On Thursday morning they robbed a petrol station north-east of Paris. Then they vanished.
The police operation to find the killers concentrated on a large area of woodland in rural Picardy, dotted with small, picturesque villages. For almost 24 hours there were no clues. Then at 8.10am on Friday the brothers surfaced in the small village of Montagny-Sainte-Félicité, population 400. It is unclear where they spent the night. But they had a problem: the Renault Clio they hijacked in Paris – telling the driver “We’re al-Qaida in Yemen, if anyone asks” – had run out of petrol.
A local teacher watched the two suspects seize her grey Peugeot. Nobody was going to argue with them, the woman said: they were heavily armed, dressed in black and carrying a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. They exited the village and made for the N2 motorway north-east of Paris. They drove south, back towards the capital. Half an hour later, they encountered a police roadblock. They opened fire. The police responded. Nobody was hurt. The suspects were forced to dump their Peugeot and run across a field.
The brothers’ options were rapidly shrinking as the manhunt entered what looked like its final stages. They found themselves in a small industrial estate in Dammartin-en-Goële. The town, population 8,500, sits in a flat basin surrounded by low hills; nearby is Charles de Gaulle airport. It was a wet and dreary morning. Rain fell from a white sky, with mist clinging to a line of trees.
The two fugitives took refuge in a local printing works. At 9am a man called Didier popped into the building for an appointment with the owner, Michel. Standing next to Michel was a strange figure dressed in black. The figure was heavily armed, wearing combat gear and with a bulletproof vest. There was only one explanation, Didier thought: this was a police officer.
“We all shook hands and my client told me to leave,” Didier told French radio. The figure said calmly: “Go, we don’t kill civilians.” Didier thought the encounter “strange”. He left the office perplexed, exiting through blue-painted doors into a car park. “As I left I didn’t know what it was. It wasn’t normal. I didn’t know what was going on. Was it a hostage-taking or a burglary?”
Within minutes armed police teams sealed off the area, telling residents to lock their doors. The small rural community found itself plunged into uncertainty and dread. Teachers taking classes at the village’s three schools shooed small pupils away from windows; adults and children sat on the floor together and sang nursery rhymes.
“Everyone here is blocked in their homes. There are four or five helicopters flying overhead and an extraordinary number of police and gendarmes,” one resident, Gregory, told French TV. The suspects had taken refuge inside the utilitarian, cube-shaped office of Creation Tendance Découverte, he said, a small family printing business employing five people.
The drama was taking place just 300 metres from his home, he added. “There is a lot of fear. We’re scared,” 14-year-old Louis Zenon said.
It appeared only a matter of time before the terrible national trauma of the previous 72 hours was brought to a conclusion. By late morning the police edged closer towards the two-storey building; sharpshooters took up positions on a neighbouring roof. There were reports that the Kouachi brothers had taken one person – possibly Michel – hostage. This looked like the endgame.
And then at 1.30pm local time came shattering reports of another hostage situation, this time at the kosher market, 15 miles away from the siege in Dammartin. A man brandishing a Kalashnikov had burst in to the ground-floor supermarket. Next door is the district of Saint-Mandé, known for its large Jewish community. The dark grey building sits in rue Albert Wellemetz, a side street close to a busy intersection. Emblazoned on the side are the words: “Hyper Cacher” or Super Kosher. Nearby is a petrol station and a delicatessen. Several shoppers were inside. One witness, Fabian, told French media: “There was an individual – African – who had a Kalashnikov … and he immediately went into the deli and he started shooting.” Fabian said at least two people had been killed, with others injured.
The rapidly unfolding crisis was turning into a nightmare for the authorities, who found themselves dealing with a ruthless and diffuse enemy, capable of making mayhem in multiple locations. Some 88,000 officers had been deployed, and yet at that moment they seemed powerless. Police swiftly identified the gunman as Coulibaly. It was the same man they suspected of shooting down the 25-year-old trainee policewoman, Clarissa Jean-Philippe, on Thursday morning in the southern suburb of Montrouge. Her killer had escaped. Now, seemingly, he was back.
Initially police believed the shooting in Montrouge and the attack on Charlie Hebdo were unrelated. Now, they understood, they were the work of the same jihadi group. Detectives said on Friday that the Kouachi brothers and Coulibaly knew each other. According to Le Monde, the three men were committed followers of the convicted terrorist Djamel Beghal. As the siege in Paris continued, officials released a photo of Coulibaly’s missing 26-year-old partner, Hayat Boumedienne.
The attack – apparently premeditated, and against a soft Jewish target – deepened the sense of horror among Parisians still reeling from Wednesday’s multiple murders. In the Marais, the historic Jewish quarter of Paris, shops downed their shutters. Nobody could rule out further atrocities. Detectives said Coulibaly had opened fire and declared chillingly: “You know who I am.” About 150 people were at a police roadblock outside the Lycée Hélène Boucher near the supermarket. Some were onlookers but many were waiting for pupils to be allowed out of the school which was shut at 1pm as a precautionary measure.
Colette Cymbor said her 18-year-old daughter would normally have finished school at 4pm. “I spoke to her and she said they’ve not had lessons this afternoon,” she said.
With tensions running high and amid the constant scream of sirens, the crowd broke into spontaneous applause when a contingent of police arrived on foot. Kevin Debuire, who was also waiting for Cymbor’s daughter Mélodie, said he was becoming increasingly concerned about taking the Metro after the spate of attacks.
Back in Dammartin-en-Goële the standoff continued. There were reports that Coulibaly had demanded the police withdraw from Dammartin, tying the fate of the Kouachi brothers to that of the hostages inside the supermarket and still alive. The infant and primary schools, 500m from where the brothers were holed up, were evacuated in the afternoon. Buses were sent to the secondary schools in the town to pick up the children. Deputy mayor Thierry Chevalier described it as a “precautionary measure”. Valérie Desayeux arrived to pick up her 13-year-old son David, but was told to wait. “It never even crossed my mind the two men would come here. My older son who lives in Paris alerted me when I was at work. I tried to call the school several times and was getting more and more worried. Someone from the school finally called back at lunchtime,” she said.
According to a local councillor, Yves Albarello, the brothers had told negotiators: “We want to die as martyrs.” Reports suggest that the commandos hacked inside the CCTV cameras inside the printing shop. They also shut down all mobile communications. When the operation began the Kouachis reportedly came out firing – and were immediately shot. Miraculously, their hostage was released unharmed.
The brothers got their wish. They left behind a traumatised and wounded nation, glancing nervously over its shoulder, wondering what’s next.



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more on this story














Cherif Kouachi during 2008 terror trial: 'I've been set up' - video

File footage of one of the Paris gunmen, Cherif Kouachi, arriving at court in 2008 on charges of helping to funnel fighters to Iraq's insurgency



Published: 13 Jan 2015




Cherif Kouachi during 2008 terror trial: 'I've been set up' - video












Analysis Charlie Hebdo attackers: born, raised and radicalised in Paris

The radicalisation of the Kouachi brothers began in a picturesque park in the capital while Amédy Coulibaly took the first steps towards terrorism in prison, but what the three had in common was growing up on the margins of French society



Published: 12 Jan 2015




Charlie Hebdo attackers: born, raised and radicalised in Paris












Paris shootings: investigation launched into where gunmen got GoPro cameras

Officials try to pinpoint when and where cameras found in possession of Kouachi brothers and Amédy Coulibaly were obtained



Published: 12 Jan 2015




Paris shootings: investigation launched into where gunmen got GoPro cameras












Paris attacks: 10,000 troops deployed as France hunts for accomplices

Mobilisation of 10,000 troops to guard potentially vulnerable locations comes as prime minister warns that ‘threat still present’



Published: 12 Jan 2015




Paris attacks: 10,000 troops deployed as France hunts for accomplices














Paris shootings: Jewish school ‘likely target’ of gunman Coulibaly




Published: 12 Jan 2015




Paris shootings: Jewish school ‘likely target’ of gunman Coulibaly








Analysis Mentor of Charlie Hebdo gunmen has been UK-based




Published: 11 Jan 2015




Mentor of Charlie Hebdo gunmen has been UK-based








Paris gunman Amedy Coulibaly declared allegiance to Isis




Published: 11 Jan 2015




Paris gunman Amedy Coulibaly declared allegiance to Isis








Charlie Hebdo: a letter to my British friends

Olivier Tonneau




Published: 13 Jan 2015




Charlie Hebdo: a letter to my British friends
















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