A
pair of dramatic raids Friday in France led to the killing of three
terrorists -- one suspected in the fatal shooting of a policewoman, the
other two in the massacre at the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine -- and to the freeing of at least some of those they were holding hostage.
The
French government's work is not over. There's still a lot of healing to
do, a lot of questions to answer about how to prevent future attacks,
and the pursuit of a woman wanted in the policewoman's shooting.
•
Four hostages were killed and 15 survived in the standoff between an
armed terrorist and police at a Paris kosher grocery store on Friday,
according to Israeli government sources who characterized a phone
conversation between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and
French President François Hollande.
•
U.S. President Barack Obama said he wants the people of France to know
that the United States "stands with you today, stands with you tomorrow"
after this week's terror. He told a crowd in Tennessee that "we stand
for freedom and hope and dignity of all human beings, (and) that's what
Paris stands for."
• The FBI and U.S.
Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin to law enforcement
across the United States discussing the Paris terrorist attack this week
and the sophistication of the tactics, a U.S. law enforcement source
told CNN. The bulletin says the attacks demonstrated "a degree of
sophistication and training traditionally not seen in recent small armed
attacks," the official said.
• A man
claiming to be Amedy Coulibaly, the suspected hostage-taker at the
eastern Paris grocery store, told CNN affiliate BFMTV that he belonged
to the Islamist militant group ISIS. CNN cannot independently confirm the authenticity of the recording.
See police raid Paris supermarket 01:39
• Three of the four suspects in a pair of deadly terror attacks this week have been killed. Another -- 26-year-old Hayat Boumeddiene -- remains at large, with French authorities working to find her.
Charlie Hebdo attackers holed up in print shop
The day's drama began in Dammartin-en-Goele, where brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi ended up in a print shop in an industrial area.
A
salesman, who identified himself only as Didier, told France Info radio
that he shook one of the gunman's hands at about 8:30 a.m. as they
arrived at the business. Didier told the public radio station that he
first thought the man, who was dressed in black and heavily armed, was a
police officer.
As he left, the armed
man said, "Go, we don't kill civilians." Didier said, "It wasn't normal.
I did not know what was going on."
What was going on, very soon, was a hostage situation.
The
gunmen told police that they wanted to die as martyrs, Yves Albarello,
who is in France's Parliament, said on channel iTele. Meanwhile, the
area was locked down -- with children stuck in schools, roads closed and
shops shuttered.
The relative silence was pierced shortly before 5 p.m. by gunshots and at least three large explosions.
Soon
after, men could be seen on the roof of the building where the Kouachi
brothers had holed up, and four helicopters, including a medical
helicopter, landed nearby.
Then came
the word that the brothers were dead and that their lone hostage, a man,
was safe, said Bernard Corneille, the mayor of nearby Othis.
That spurred Dammartin-en-Goele Mayor Michel Dutruge, as he told France Info radio, to breathe "a big sigh of relief."
Hostages at kosher grocery store
Meanwhile,
in a very different sectting near Paris's Porte de Vincennes about 40
kilometers (25 miles) away, a similar crisis was playing out at a kosher
grocery store.
That's where Amedy Coulibaly -- the same man who, authorities said, is suspected with Boumeddiene of killing a policewoman Thursday in Montrouge south of Paris -- went Friday, taking a number of hostages of his own.
Like
Cherif Kouachi, a man claiming to be Coulibaly called BFMTV on Friday.
At the scene, witnesses heard Coulibaly demand freedom for the Kouachi
brothers, according to police union spokesman Pascal Disand.
Law enforcement swarmed the area. Dozens of schools went on lockdown. And people waited for a resolution.
It
came a few minutes after the Dammartin-en-Goele climax, in the form of
explosions and gunfire, then the sight of up to 20 heavily armed police
officers moving into the store. They came out with a number of
civilians.
But not everyone made it.
Hollande said four people were killed, though it wasn't immediately
known if that number includes Coulibaly. Israeli government sources told
CNN that Hollande told Netanyahu that four hostages were killed and 15
were rescued.
Meanwhile, Boumeddiene remains on the loose.
Father: 'It's like a war'
In a nationally televised speech Friday night, Hollande called the Porte de Vincennes deaths an "anti-Semitic" act.
He
urged his countrymen not to respond with violence against Muslims,
saying, "Those who committed these acts have nothing to do with the
Muslim religion."
"Unity is our best weapon," Hollande said.
Map: Standoffs near Paris, France
That kind of military language is apt when you're talking about two deadly attacks and two hostage-takings in a few days.
It's
something that a man, who asked to be called simply Teddy, understands.
He was outside Henri Dunant elementary school in Dammartin-en-Goele on
Friday, hoping to pick up his young son.
And,
eventually, the students did leave the school -- accompanied by police
officers who held their hands as they guided and, in some cases, lifted
them onto an awaiting bus that would take them to safety.
"It's like a war," Teddy said. "I don't know how I will explain this to my 5-year-old son."
Parts of France on high alert
This
"war" erupted two days ago, when a pair of heavily armed men -- hooded
and dressed in black -- entered the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, the
satirical magazine known for its provocative, often profane, sometimes
controversial take on religion, politics and most anything else.
They
burst into a meeting, called out individuals, and then executed them.
The dead included editor and cartoonist Stephane Charbonnier and four
other well-known cartoonists known by the pen names: Cabu, Wolinski,
Honore and Tignous.
Paris attack's tragic timeline 02:31
Authorities
followed a lead Thursday morning from a gas station attendant near
Villers-Cotterets, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from
Dammartin-en-Goele, whom Cherif Kouachi, 32, and Said Kouachi, 34,
reportedly threatened as they stole food and gas. Police think the
brothers may have later fled on foot into nearby woods.
Northern
France's Picardy region was the focal point of the manhunt, and Prime
Minister Manuel Valls put it on the same, highest-possible alert level
as has been in place since Wednesday in and around Paris.
Police
spying down with night vision optics from helicopters said they thought
they caught a glimpse of them Thursday near Crepy-en-Valois, France --
not far from the reported robbery.
That
town and the gas station border a patch of woods, and on another side
of the forest, 30 to 40 police vehicles swarmed out from the town of
Longpont.
Squads of officers armed with rifles -- some also in helmets and with shields -- canvassed fields and forest.
They didn't find the Kouachi brothers there. Instead, somehow, they moved to Dammartin-en-Goele.
Ties to Islamist extremists
As
these two moved, the French government -- including more than 80,000
police deployed across the country -- also didn't stand still.
Some
of them tried to prevent more bloodshed, which might have something to
do with nine people detained after the Charlie Hebdo attacks.
Investigators also dug to learn about the attackers.
Both men had ties to Islamist extremists.
Said Kouachi, left, and Cherif Kouachi are suspects in the Paris attack.
Said,
the elder of the Kouachi brothers, spent several months in Yemen in
2011, receiving weapons training and working with al Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula, according to U.S. officials.
His
younger brother, Cherif, has a long history of jihad and anti-Semitism,
according to documents obtained by CNN. In a 400-page court record, he
is described as wanting to go to Iraq through Syria "to go and combat
the Americans."
"I was ready to go and
die in battle," he said in a deposition. "... I got this idea when I saw
the injustices shown by television. ... I am speaking about the torture
that the Americans have inflicted on the Iraqis."
And
Cherif is a close associate of Coulibaly, the suspect in Thursday's
police shooting in Montrouge and the man behind the eastern Paris
grocery store siege, a Western intelligence source told CNN.
Both
men were involved in a 2010 attempt to free an Algerian incarcerated
for a 1995 subway bombing. Coulibaly was arrested with 240 rounds of
ammunition for a Kalashnikov rifle and a photo of Djamel Beghal, a
French Algerian once known as al Qaeda's premier European recruiter.
The
Western intelligence source said that Coulibaly lived with Boumeddiene,
his alleged accomplice in the police shooting, and that the two
traveled to Malaysia together.
Charlie Hebdo columnist: 'They didn't want us to be quiet'
Slain editor: Without freedom of speech we are dead 02:08
France,
as a nation, appears to be invigorated by all of it -- joined by others
worldwide who've rallied around the country and, especially, Charlie
Hebdo magazine.
A unity rally will be
held Sunday "celebrating the values behind" Charlie Hebdo, said British
Prime Minister David Cameron, who will travel to Paris to attend.
And
the magazine itself -- whose former offices were firebombed in 2011, on
the day it was to publish an issue poking fun at Islamic law and after
it published a cartoon of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed -- will go on as
well, even without its leader and most talented staffers. It's set to
publish thousands of copies of its latest edition next Wednesday.
Map: Charlie Hebdo HQ, Paris
Patrick
Pelloux, a columnist for the magazine, told CNN's Anderson Cooper that
"I don't know if I'm afraid anymore, because I've seen fear. I was
scared for my friends, and they are dead."
Instead, he and many others are defiant.
"I
know that they didn't want us to be quiet," Pelloux said of the slain
Charlie Hebdo staffers. "They wanted us to continue to fight for these
values, cultural pluralism, democracy and secularism, the respect of
others. They would be assassinated twice, if we remained silent."
No comments:
Post a Comment