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Charlie Hebdo attack



France sieges: after Charlie Hebdo attack, how terror unfolded









Details surrounding the dramatic events at printworks and kosher supermarket, as three gunmen are killed














Officers outside the Hyper Cacher supermarket in Paris after the police raided the store. Photograph: Maya Vidon-White/EPA




Alexandra Topping


Saturday 10 January 2015 13.10 EST







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As France awoke from the nightmare of three days of terror that left 20 people including three gunmen dead and scores of others injured, new details have emerged of the two dramatic sieges that ended with the deaths of three gunmen on Friday.
From terrified customers of a kosher supermarket, who were hidden in a basement coldroom by a Muslim employee while a gunman wielded a Kalashnikov in the shop above, to the owner of the printworks in a small town north of Paris, who was released after treating the wound of one of the brothers who opened fire at the Charlie Hebdo offices on Wednesday, the tales behind the bloody drama that has gripped France and the world emerged.
Journalists described how the Kouachi brothers and their accomplice Amedy Coulibaly had communicated calmly throughout the day, while police gave further details of the raids which saw their reign of terror brought to an end.
By 8.10am local time on Friday the Charlie Hebdo gunmen, by then named by French police as the brothers Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, 32 and 34 respectively, had broken cover. After unleashing a volley of bullets in the office of Charlie Hebdo at 11.30am on Wednesday, murdering 12 people including eight journalists and two policemen, the brothers had been on the run. On Thursday they drove north through Picardy, robbing a petrol station in Villers-Cotterêts in the Aisne region, north-east of Paris, driving off with assault rifles and rocket launchers visible in the back of their getaway car.
A huge overnight manhunt in a large wooded area nearby proved fruitless but a little after 8am on Friday the pair resurfaced, hijacking a grey Peugeot 206 from a teacher in the village of Montagny-Sainte-Félicité. Soon after, with the country gripped by live coverage of the Swat teams, military helicopters and a tank mobilised to the scene, there was a shootout between the suspects and police on the N2 road.
With the full weight of the French security services bearing down upon them, the brothers drove into an industrial estate in the small village of Dammartin-en-Goële, 25 miles north-east of Paris.
Local residents were gripped with fear. “I heard three gunshots, boom, boom, boom, in the industrial zone,” a woman called Onya told Le Figaro. Minutes later a neighbour called with the message: “It’s happening next door, don’t move.” The gendarmes went from house to house, curtains were closed, businesses shut, 1,000 schoolchildren were evacuated and the streets deserted.
As the Kouachi brothers holed themselves up in a printworks, tensions rose a notch further amid reports that they had taken a hostage. Authorities said the brothers took the owner hostage at the plant but let him go, reportedly after he helped Saïd with a neck wound sustained in the shootout. Speaking to Channel 4 News on Saturday, Michel Catalano said the gunmen were polite: “When I saw them I thought my life was going to end … but they weren’t aggressive.”
Another man, Didier, described visiting the company and mistakenly shaking one of the gunman’s hands in the belief he was a police officer, only for the gunman to tell him to leave with the words “we don’t kill civilians”.
It later emerged that the manager had told another employee, Lilian Lepere, a 26-year-old graphic designer, to hide from the brothers, and he had hidden himself under a sink in the canteen at the business, according to the Paris prosecutor, François Molins.
Terrified, Lepere nevertheless proved to be a vital secret weapon, communicating with police via text, sending them “tactical elements such as his location inside the premises” before he was finally released by police after the death of the Kouachi brothers, said Molins.
He wasn’t the only one communicating with the outside world. French television news station BFMTV called Chérif Kouachi at 10am, who told them they had carried out the Charlie Hebdo killings under the auspices of al-Qaida in Yemen. In an interview released only after the end of the siege, Chérif said: “We just want to say that we are the defenders of the prophet, and that I, Chérif Kouachi, was sent by al-Qaida in Yemen. And that I went there and that it was Sheikh Anwar al-Awlaki who financed me”, adding that the visit had taken place before Awlaki was killed.
Igor Sahiri, a journalist with BFMTV, told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that Chérif was “really prepared”. He said: “It was somebody very serene. He was very calm. It was just like a normal discussion, no rudeness. My feeling was that this kind of man is ready to die.”
Asked if he intended to kill more civilians, Chérif replied: “Did we kill any civilians in the past two days when you were looking for us? Come on. We are not killers, we are the defenders of the prophet, and we kill those who insult him.”
While all eyes had been focused on Dammartin, suddenly at 1pm the focus was back in the east of Paris where another fast-moving hostage situation was under way at a kosher supermarket at Porte de Vincennes. Amedy Coulibaly, who had on Wednesday shot 27-year-old traffic policewoman Clarissa Jean-Philippe in Montrouge, south Paris, entered the Hyper Cacher, Kalashnikov blazing, probably killing four people, according to the French prosecutor.
Another vast manhunt launched with police releasing details of Coulibaly, whose DNA had been identified from a cloth found near the scene at Montrouge, and his girlfriend Hayat Boumeddiene, 26, who is still at large.
BFMTV also spoke to Coulibaly, who revealed that the attacks had been planned in conjunction with the Kouachi brothers and he had targeted the Paris shop “because it was Jewish”. Adding to the nightmare unfolding north of Paris, he also revealed he was holding 16 hostages.
He said: “They must stop attacking the Islamic State, stop unveiling our women, stop putting our brothers in prison for nothing at all. It is you who is financing [the government]. You pay taxes.”
According to RTL a hostage said they had to pay taxes, to which he replied: “You do not have to. I do not pay taxes.”
But what he didn’t know was that an employee of the shop, a Muslim, had hidden six people, including a three-year-old boy and his father and a month-old baby, in the coldroom of the supermarket, quietly turning out the light and the fridge.
The employee, named only as Lassana told BFMTV: “When they came running down [into the basement] I opened the door of the fridge. Several came in with me. I turned off the light and the fridge … I closed the door and I said: ‘You stay quiet there. I’m going back out.’”
Contacting the world outside by telephone, they described being cold, but joked about opening a bottle of wine because there were plenty. One of the prisoners, Ilan, wrapped his coat around his small son to hide him. His mother, realising he was hidden, passed on his number to police who used it to track his whereabouts.
Another man caught up in the attack identified himself as Mickael B in his 30s and described the moment Coulibaly entered the store.
“I heard a shot. It was very loud. I first thought it was a firecracker. Then as I turned I saw a black man armed with two Kalashnikov rifles, I understood what was happening. New shots rang out. I took my son by the neck and went to the back of the store where there was a spiral staircase to the basement.”
He said there were two coldrooms downstairs, but his did not lock and he was ordered back upstairs by the gunman, who said: “I am Amedy Coulibaly, Malian and Muslim. I belong to the Islamic State.” In dramatic scenes, one man attempted to grab a gun, only to be shot down and killed by Coulibaly. “He fired on the person who did it and he died instantly,” he said. “My son started to cry. He wanted to go home.”
There were a few brief hours of unbearable tension as news from the two scenes fell quiet. But then, at 4.55pm local time and with no warning, a volley of explosions and gunfire could be heard from the printworks at Dammartin-en-Goële as the denouement of three days of terror began to unfold.
According to media reports, the two gunmen, perhaps aware of the Swat teams closing in around them, charged out of the building with guns blazing before being cut down by a volley of fire.
Moments later, security forces moved in on the kosher supermarket. BFMTV had been speaking to Coulibaly, who had not hung up his phone. As he knelt to prayer, the station were able to inform police of a lapse in his defences and they struck hard using flashbangs and assault rifles to force entry to the building. “The noise was deafening,” Mickael B told Le Point. “He was dead. It was over.”
Live news streams around the world beamed dramatic scenes of terrified hostages spilling on to the street under police protection. By 5.30pm, police had found five bodies in the supermarket, including that of Coulibaly. Police confirmed the Kouachi brothers, who begun the unprecedented attack with the assault on the Charlie Hebdo offices three days earlier, had been killed.
Three days of terror had seen the mobilisation of more than 80,000 French police and security personnel, the bloody attack on Charlie Hebdo, followed by shootouts, chases and two dramatic sieges and, at the final count, the deaths of 17 innocent people.



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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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