PARIS (AP) – With explosions and gunfire, security forces today ended a three-day terror spree around Paris, killing the two al-Qaida-linked brothers who staged a murderous rampage at a satirical newspaper, and an associate who seized a kosher supermarket to try to help them escape.
The worst terrorist attacks France has seen in decades killed at least 20 people, including the three gunmen. The fate of a fourth suspect – the wife of the market attacker – remained unclear.
Al-Qaida’s branch in Yemen said it directed the attack against the publication Charlie Hebdo to avenge the honour of the Prophet Muhammad, a target of the weekly’s satire.
Paris shut down a famed Jewish neighbourhood amid fears that a wider cell might launch further violence.
President Francois Hollande called on his nation to remain united and alert.
“The threats facing France are not finished,” he said.
“We must be vigilant,” he said, and defiant. “We are a free people who cave to no pressure.”
The drama, which played out on live TV and in social media, began with the brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi methodically killing 12 people Wednesday at the offices of the weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo before escaping by car.
The next day, a gunman police identified as Amedy Couliably shot a policewoman to death south of Paris.
It ended at dusk today with near simultaneous raids in two locations: a printing plant in the town of Dammartin-en-Goele, northeast of Paris, where the Koachis were holed up with a lone hostage, and the Paris supermarket where Coulibaly was holding shoppers at gunpoint and threatened to kill them unless police let the Koachis go.
As black-clad security forces surrounded both sites, booming explosions, heavy gunfire and dense smoke heralded the news that the sieges were over and the three gunmen were dead – but also killed were four of the hostages at the kosher market. Sixteen hostages were freed, one from the printing plant and 15 others from the store.
The attackers had ties to each other and to terrorism that reached back years and extended from Paris to al-Qaida in Yemen. They epitomised Western authorities’ greatest fear: Islamic radicals who trained abroad and came home to stage attacks.
After the killings at the Charlie Hebdo offices, Cherif Kouachi, 32, and his 34-year-old brother Said led police on a chase around northeastern France, robbing a gas station and stealing a car before ending up at the printing plant in Dammartin-en-Goele, which is near Charles de Gaulle airport.
