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Paris terror attack: huge manhunt under way after gunmen kill 12 Police seal off Paris in huge manhunt after 12 killed in Charlie Hebdo attack
(about 1 hour later)
A huge manhunt is under way in Paris for masked and hooded men armed with Kalashnikovs who stormed the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people – including two policemen and eight journalists – before escaping in a car. French police scrambled to seal off central Paris on Wednesday night as part of a desperate manhunt for the perpetrators of the worst terrorist attack in France for half a century and the bloodiest single assault on western journalism in living memory.
François Hollande, the French president, described the attack as “an act of exceptional barbarism”. The attack on the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which left 12 dead, triggered a wave of solidarity, with rallies in defence of free speech in more than 30 French cities and in global capitals. President François Hollande declared a day of national mourning on Thursday with flags at half-mast for three days, saying the country had been “struck at its very heart”. But he vowed: “Freedom will always be stronger than barbarism.”
Paris prosecutor François Molins said two gunmen entered the offices of the magazine at 11.30am, killing one person in the foyer before climbing to the second floor – where the paper was holding an editorial meeting – and opening fire. World leaders also pledged they would not be cowed, but the longer-term impact on free expression was unclear in the wake of a mass killing of such brutality.
The gunmen fled in a car, killing at least one officer in exchanges of fire with police. They then carjacked another vehicle near Paris’s péripherique and fled. Molins said three suspects in total were being pursued, but the details of the investigation would remain confidential. Two gunmen in balaclavas and bullet-proof vests, armed with a pump-action shotgun and an automatic rifle, stormed into the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo at about 11.30am as about 15 journalists had gathered for the weekly editorial conference. They called for the editor by name and then murdered him before spraying the room with gunfire, killing nine more and wounding others. Laurent Léger, a Charlie Hebdo writer, managed to sound the alarm, calling a friend and telling him: “Call the police. It’s carnage, a bloodbath. Everyone is dead.”
A spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed that 12 people had been killed in the attack in rue Nicolas Appert, in the 11th arrondissement in eastern Paris. As they made their getaway, the gunmen shot dead two policemen, including one who they shot in the head at close range as he lay injured on the pavement.
Benoît Bringer, who works at a press agency on the same floor as the magazine’s offices, told France Radio: “We saw hooded men carrying Kalashnikovs entering the building. We called the police. After a few minutes we heard heavy firing – a lot of firing, a hell of a lot. We went upstairs to take shelter on the roof. Then after about 10 minutes we saw two armed men come out on to the street. There was more shouting, more firing. The two attackers then jumped into a small black Citroën that they had apparently arrived in and drove off. Police said there was a third man involved in the attack, who had driven the car to the magazine offices, on rue Nicolas Appert in the 11th arrondissement in eastern Paris, and it is not clear whether he fled the scene during the attack.
“Three policemen had arrived on bikes but had to leave because the men were armed, obviously … Then the attackers took off in a car.” The gunmen abandoned the Citroën in the 19th arrondissement, inthe north-east of the capital before hijacking another car. Police said the attackers had then had gone to ground, leaving a nation in shock.
Visiting the scene of the country’s worst atrocity in decades, Hollande described it as “a terrorist attack, without a doubt” and The attack was the bloody culmination of a long-simmering struggle between France’s libertarian traditions of free speech and an increasingly extreme strand of Islamism. Witnesses described hearing the attackers shout “Allahu Akbar” as well as “We have avenged the Prophet.” Two eyewitnesses said they claimed to be from al-Qaida. One of them specified al-Qaida in Yemen, a group also known as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.
warned that several other attacks had been foiled in recent weeks. He called for national unity and convened an emergency cabinet meeting. The French government raised the terror alert level in the greater Paris region to the highest level possible. Charlie Hebdo, a feisty and irreverent publication with a 44-year history, had been at the very frontline of that battle since 2006, when it first reprinted cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad originally published by the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten. Its offices were firebombed in 2011 after it published another cartoon of the Muslim prophet.
Five of the victims have been named, including four Charlie Hebdo journalists: editor Stéphane Charbonnier and cartoonists Jean Cabut, Georges Wolinski and Bernard Verlhac. AFP reported that Bernard Maris, an economist and writer who contributed to the magazine, was also killed. Charlie Hebdo cartoonist and editor Stéphane Charbonnier, known simply as Charb, refused to back down in the face of repeated threats, raising the stakes by publishing pictures portraying a naked Muhammad in 2012. His was the name the gunmen called out as soon as they burst into the morning conference, and he was the first to die in the attack. Among other victims was one of France’s best-known cartoonists, Jean Cabut, a 75-year-old veteran of the national press known universally as Cabu.
#CharlieHebdo: Charb, Wolinski, Cabu et Tignous sont morts http://t.co/CdynLOg8r0 #AFP pic.twitter.com/YgiVHEeVQa Visiting the scene of France’s worst atrocity in decades barely an hour afterwards, a visibly shocked Hollande described it as “a terrorist attack, without a doubt”. The attack was “an act of exceptional barbarism”, he said. In the number of fatalities, it was the worst single terrorist attack France has suffered for at least 50 years.
The attack comes amid mounting tension about immigration in France and what many non-Muslim French see as a rising Islamic influence in society. There were rallies in solidarity around the world. The hashtag #JeSuisCharlie spread across Twitter. Other French publications lined up to offer desk space and editorial support to allow the weekly to continue publication.
Charlie Hebdo’s cover story this week featured Michel Houellebecq, the controversial author, whose latest book, Submission, portrays France in 2022, run by a Muslim president according to the laws of conservative Islam. It was, said the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, a “direct assault on democracy, media and freedom of expression”. Barack Obama said: “The fact that this was an attack on journalists, attack on our free press, also underscores the degree to which these terrorists fear freedom of speech and freedom of the press.”
The Islamic State extremist group has previously warned it intends to attack France and, in what appeared to be the last tweet before the attack, Charlie Hebdo staff posted a satirical cartoon of the group’s leader, giving his best wishes for good health. The magazine has itself frequently been criticised – and prosecuted under anti-racism laws – for publishing cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. Its offices were firebombed in 2011 after it published a spoof cover featuring a cartoon of the Muslim prophet. In London, David Cameron, the UK prime minister and his German counterpart, Angela Merkel, were briefed together by the British security service, MI5 at Downing Street. Cameron called the attack “sickening”, and said: “We stand with the French people in the fight against terror and defending the freedom of the press.” Merkel described it as an attack on “the core elements of our free democratic culture”.
Witnesses described hearing cries of “Allahu Akbar” (“God is great”) during the attack. Witnesses described the gunmen as seemingly calm and professional. They held their weapons in a way which suggested they had some form of military training, although when they arrived at the building they were unsure where to go and what stairwell and floor the offices were on. They forced a woman cartoonist to key in the entry code to the building, and stormed into at least two other offices sharing the block demanding to know the whereabouts of Charlie Hebdo.
An unnamed witness from an office across the corridor said she and her colleagues had heard “a huge boom”. “Then someone opened the door to our office and asked where Charlie Hebdo was. He had a rifle. We backed away. After he left, we heard gunfire. We went to the windows, there were two men running with guns, speaking in bad French … They were shouting outside, and shooting again. Afterwards, I saw someone leaving the building with his hands covered in blood.” The attack on the newsroom lasted barely five minutes, police said. On the way out of the building, the attackers ran into a police car that was arriving at the scene and opened fire. One of the two officers who died was Charb’s bodyguard, who was an experienced member of a police VIP protection unit. A third policeman was seriously injured.
One neighbour saw paramedics trying to save an injured police officer on the road outside her office. In their high-speed getaway, they ran down a pedestrian, gravely injuring him, and drove north through busy midday traffic for about three miles before abandoning the now damaged Citroën in the north-eastern 19th arrondissement.
“It was ghastly, awful,” she said. “We knew it was serious because they weren’t even trying to take him away to hospital. They were just trying to save him right there in the street. A witness said the gunmen climbed out wielding a rocket launcher and yanked an elderly man out of the car behind. The man insisted on taking his dog out of the car before the attackers drove off, and they let him. They climbed into the Renault Clio telling bystanders: “You can tell the media we’re from al-Qaida in Yemen.”
“We are all in shock”. The police arrived at the scene a few minutes later but by then the suspects had gone.Roadblocks were set up on all the exit points leading out through the Portes de Paris, the gateways in the old walls of the city. As night fell over Paris, there was still no trace of the killers.
Television footage showed the surrounding streets jammed with police and emergency service vehicles, while tweeted pictures from people at the scene showed police cars riddled with bullets and people being carried away on stretchers.
A police spokesman, Rocco Contente, said the men “appeared to have opened fire on everyone. It was carnage, absolute butchery.”
World leaders united to condemn the atrocity, including Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, who said it was a “direct assault on democracy, media and freedom of expression”.
David Cameron, the UK prime minister, called the attack “sickening”, and said: “We stand with the French people in the fight against terror and defending the freedom of the press.” Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said in a statement it was a an “abominable act” that was also “an attack on freedom of speech and the press, core elements of our free democratic culture”.
Barack Obama said he strongly condemned the attack, adding: “France is America’s oldest ally, and has stood shoulder to shoulder with the United States in the fight against terrorists who threaten our shared security and the world.”
As dusk fell, thousands of Parisians gathered at the Place de la République, to show their anger, grief and solidarity. Similar spontaneous demonstrations took place across France, in the cities of Bordeaux, Nantes, Lyon and elsewhere.
Social media users expressed their solidarity with Charlie Hebdo’s journalists by using the hashtag #JeSuisCharlie.
Charlie Hebdo gained international notoriety in 2006 when it reprinted cartoons of the prophet Muhammad originally published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, prompting uproar across the Muslim world. In September 2012, it published cartoons of the prophet naked, at a time of violent protests in several Muslim countries over the film Innocence of Muslims.