NB: We have included a couple of tweets, one at the end of the post directing readers to the video taken by a bystander for those who would like to see it. A warning that the content is disturbing. – CH
LATEST UPDATE –Â French detain seven in Paris terror attack manhunt
From AFP;Â
Seven people have been detained in the hunt for brothers suspected of gunning down 12 people in an Islamist assault on a satirical weekly, a judicial source said Thursday.
Confirming earlier comments by Prime Minister Manuel Valls, the source, who refused to be named, said men and women close to the two brothers were currently being questioned by police, without saying where they had been detained.
Valls, meanwhile, told RTL radio that the two suspects — who are still on the run — were known to intelligence services and were “no doubt” being followed before Wednesday’s attack.
The masked, black-clad gunmen burst into the offices of the Charlie Hebdo magazine on Wednesday morning, killing some of France’s most outspoken journalists and two policemen, before jumping into a car and escaping.
Police have issued arrest warrants for Cherif Kouachi, 32, a known jihadist convicted in 2008 for involvement in a network sending fighters to Iraq, and his 34-year-old brother Said. Both were born in Paris.
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UPDATE
From AFP;
By Nicholas Vinocur and Antony Paone
PARIS (Reuters) – Hooded gunmen stormed the Paris offices of a weekly satirical magazine renowned for lampooning radical Islam, killing at least 12 people, including two police officers in the worst militant attack on French soil in recent decades.
One of the men was captured on video shouting “Allah!” as four shots rang out. Two assailants are then seen calmly leaving the scene and remain at large.
Charlie Hebdo (Charlie Weekly) is renowned for courting controversy with satirical attacks on political and religious leaders and has published numerous cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammad. The last tweet on its account mocked Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the militant Islamic State, which has taken control of large swathes of Iraq and Syria.
“This is a terrorist attack, there is no doubt about it,” President Francois Hollande told reporters after rushing to the scene of the attack. His government raised France’s security level to the highest notch and scheduled an emergency cabinet meeting.
The gunmen fled towards the eastern Paris suburbs after holding up a car, police officials said.
“There is possibility of other attacks and other sites are being secured,” Police union official Rocco Contento said.
Sirens could be heard across Paris as Prime Minister Manuel Valls said security would be ramped up at transport hubs, religious sites, media offices and department stores.
The White House said U.S. security officials were in contact with their French counterparts.
“If the perpetrators are still at large, we’re going to track them down, and we’re going to work with the French to do that,” a White House spokesman told MSNBC television.
Another 20 people were injured in the attack, including four or five critically. Police union official Contento described the scene inside the offices as “carnage”.
“About a half an hour ago two black-hooded men entered the building with Kalashnikovs (rifles),” witness Benoit Bringer told TV station iTELE. “A few minutes later we heard lots of shots.”
In a video shot by journalist Martin Boudot from a rooftop near the magazine’s offices, a man can be heard screaming “Allah”; then followed the sound of three or four shots.
“They’re coming out. There are two of them,” says a new voice on the video as two men appear in the frame, then raise their arms in a shooting posture.
France last year reinforced its anti-terrorism laws and is already on alert after calls from Islamist militants to attack its citizens and interests in reprisal for French military strikes on Islamist strongholds in theMiddle East and Africa.
The attack, as yet unclaimed, comes amid what a number of commentators have identified as rising xenophobia in Europe, with thousands of protesters in several German cities rallying earlier this week against Muslim immigration. France’s five-million-strong Muslim population is Europe’s largest.
“I am extremely angry. These are criminals, barbarians. They have sold their soul to hell. This is not freedom. This is not Islam and I hope the french will come out united at the end of this,” said Hassen Chalghoumi, imam of the Drancy mosque in Paris’s Seine-Saint-Denis northern suburb.
GUNMEN FLED
Dozens of police and emergency services were at the site as police secured a wide perimeter around the shooting site, where a Reuters reporter saw a car riddled with bullet holes.
Late last year, a man shouting “Allahu Akbar” (“God is greatest”) injured 13 by ramming a vehicle into a crowd in the eastern city of Dijon. French officials say several attacks were prevented in recent weeks and Valls has said France had “never before faced such a high threat linked to terrorism”.
A firebomb attack gutted the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo in November 2011 after it put an image of the Prophet Mohammad on its cover in what it described as a Shariah edition.
While there was no immediate claim for the shooting, one supporter of Islamic State suggested in a tweet the image of Mohammed was the reason for the attack.
The last major attack in Paris was in the mid-1990s when the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) carried out a spate of attacks, including the bombing of a commuter train in 1995 which killed eight people and injured 150.
UPDATE: Paris attackers shouted ‘we have avenged the prophet’: police
The attackers who stormed the Paris offices of satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday, killing 12 people, shouted “we have avenged the prophet”, according to witnesses cited by a police source. In a video of the attack filmed by a man taking refuge on a nearby rooftop, the men can be heard shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest) between rounds of heavy arms fire.
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© 1994-2015 Agence France-Presse
From AFP;
By Fran BLANDY
At least 12 people were killed when gunmen armed with Kalashnikovs and a rocket-launcher opened fire in the offices of French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday.
President Francois Hollande, who immediately headed to the scene of the shooting in Paris, described it as a “terrorist attack.”
Journalist’s video claims to show gunshots being fired at #CharlieHebdo offices http://t.co/VkLHN9pxyf pic.twitter.com/tgmBceS5r6
— The Independent (@Independent) January 7, 2015
Hollande said 11 people were killed and another four were in critical condition after the attack, branding it an “act of exceptional barbarism” and calling an emergency cabinet meeting. He called for “national unity” as the government raised its alert level to the highest possible in the greater Paris region. He added that “several terrorist attacks had been foiled in recent weeks”.
BREAKING: Ten journalists, 2 police officers killed in the #CharlieHebdo terrorist attack. — Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) January 7, 2015
Wednesday’s shooting is one of the worst attacks in France in decades.
A source close to the investigation said two men “armed with a Kalashnikov and a rocket-launcher” stormed the building in central Paris and “fire was exchanged with security forces”.
The source said a gunman had hijacked a car and knocked over a pedestrian while attempting to speed away. He added that two police officers had died in the attack.
Television footage showed large numbers of police in the area, bullet-riddled windows and people being carried away on stretchers.
It was not immediately clear what happened to the attackers.
In the first reaction from abroad, British Prime Minister David Cameron condemned the  shooting.
“The murders in Paris are sickening. We stand with the French people in the fight against terror and defending the freedom of the press,” he said in a message on Twitter.
The satirical newspaper gained notoriety in February 2006 when it reprinted cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that had originally appeared in Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, causing fury across the Muslim world.
Its offices were fire-bombed in November 2011 when it published a cartoon of Mohammed and under the title “Charia Hebdo”.
French Justice Minister C.Taubira reacts outside of the headquarters of the satirical newspaper #CharlieHebdo #AFP pic.twitter.com/CwvowQMR12
— AFP Photo Department (@AFPphoto) January 7, 2015
– Death threats –Â
Despite being taken to court under anti-racism laws, the weekly continued to publish controversial cartoons of the Muslim prophet. In September 2012 Charlie Hebdo published cartoons of a naked Mohammed as violent protests were taking place in several countries over a low-budget film, titled “Innocence of Muslims”, which was made in the United States and insulted the prophet. French schools, consulates and cultural centres in 20 Muslim countries were briefly closed along with embassies for fear of retaliatory attacks at the time. Editor Stephane Charbonnier has received death threats and lives under police protection.
“I don’t understand how people can attack a newspaper with heavy weapons. A newspaper is not a weapon of war”- #CharlieHebdo Editor-in-chief — Sara Firth (@Sara__Firth) January 7, 2015
This week’s front page featured controversial author French Michel Houellebecq, whose latest book “Soumission”, or “Submission,” which imagines a France in the near future that is ruled by an Islamic government, came out Wednesday. The book has widely been touted as tapping into growing unease among non-Muslim French about immigration and the rise of Islamic influence in society.
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Horrific footage shows police officer begging for his life before gunman shoots him in the head http://t.co/ZzU755hwuJ #CharlieHebdo — Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) January 7, 2015
