French police officers investigate the scene at the kosher grocery store in eastern Paris after police launched an assault killing the gunman holed up in the market (Agence France-Presse photo)
Paris:
France's terrorist trauma ended on Friday, at least for the moment, as it had begun: with bursts of gunfire and blood.
With nearly simultaneous raids north and east of Paris, heavily armed police units finally halted an Islamist militant rampage that had started Wednesday with a massacre at a satirical newspaper, continued Thursday with a roadside killing and, in a final spree of violence Friday, left shoppers at a kosher supermarket captive to a gunman who had lined the premises with explosives.
The militants suspected of orchestrating France's worst spasm of terrorism since the 1954-62 Algerian War - two brothers of Algerian descent and an associate of African origins - were killed. Also dead were four of the people held hostage at Hyper Cacher, the kosher supermarket in eastern Paris.
Altogether, 20 people, including the three militants, died in three days of bloodshed that President Francois Hollande, in a solemn address to the nation Friday, described as the work of "madmen, fanatics" who had created "a tragedy for the nation that we were obliged to confront."
During the assault by police officers on the kosher supermarket, special forces were sprayed with bullets, said Christophe Tirante, a senior police official.
The police also said the supermarket had been booby-trapped, making it especially hard to get to the hostage taker.
Rocco Contento, a spokesman for the Unité SGP police union in Paris, said the police had been helped by someone hiding in a cold meat locker in the supermarket who had texted helpful messages.
Denouncing the attack on the kosher store as a "terrifying act of anti-Semitism," Hollande saluted the security forces for their "courage, bravura and efficiency," but warned that France was "not finished with the threats of which it is the target."
Also far from over are the shock waves created by a drama that sharply escalated longstanding worries about France's impoverished immigrant suburbs and the radicalization of disenfranchised young people on society's margins. And there remain many questions about the failure of the French security apparatus to disrupt the actions of militants who had links to operatives working with al-Qaida in Yemen, who had been known to the police for years, and who had been closely monitored by the intelligence services.
Concerns about further attacks were underlined by remarks Friday from Harith al-Nadhari, a militant cleric who speaks for al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. The Associated Press reported that he had issued a recording on the group's Twitter feed that denounced the "filthy" French and called them "the heads of infidelity who insult the prophets."
Hailing the dead militants as "hero mujahedeen," Nadhari warned France: "It is better for you to stop striking Muslims so you can live in peace. But if you only wish for war, then rejoice; you will not enjoy peace as long as you wage war on God and his prophets and fight Muslims."
The events are already resonating in French politics and could further strengthen a surging far-right party, the National Front, which has railed against what it says is the failure of immigrants, and Muslims in particular, to integrate into French society.
But police raids Friday - one on a printing plant in Dammartin-en-Goele, a village near Charles de Gaulle Airport north of Paris, and the other on the kosher store in Porte de Vincennes at the eastern edge of the city - eased a dark and at times panicked mood that had gripped the public and politicians since the massacre of 12 people at the Charlie Hebdo newspaper on Wednesday.
Fear that the crisis was slipping beyond the control of Hollande's already beleaguered Socialist government had stirred calls from some conservative politicians for the imposition of a state of emergency. There had also been several retaliatory attacks on mosques, and an explosion at a kebab shop in eastern France.
Hollande, denouncing both racism and anti-Semitism, said the week's mayhem had "nothing to do with Islam" and described unity as the country's "best weapon."
Said Kouachi, 34, the older of the two brothers suspected of carrying out the attack on Charlie Hebdo, had traveled to Yemen in 2011 and received terrorist training from al-Qaida's affiliate there before returning to France, according to U.S. officials.
His younger brother, Cherif Kouachi, 32, a sometime pizza delivery man and fishmonger, said he, too, had trained in Yemen. He had been arrested in France in 2005 as he prepared to leave for Syria, the first leg of a trip he had hoped would take him to Iraq; he was convicted three years later.
During the attack on the newspaper, the assailants identified themselves as part of al-Qaida in Yemen, also known as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, and shouted, "Allahu akbar," meaning, "God is great." Their open embrace of Islam during an act of violence was seized on by those who had been warning about what they called the gulf between Islam and the values of the West.
The hostage taker at the kosher supermarket was identified as Amedy Coulibaly, a 32-year-old Frenchman of African descent who had shot and killed a police officer in the south of Paris on Thursday. He was a friend of the younger Kouachi brother, Cherif. The police said that both Coulibaly and Cherif Kouachi were followers of Djamel Beghal, a French-Algerian champion of jihad who was jailed in 2001 for planning an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Paris.
The police said Coulibaly had an accomplice, identified by the authorities as 26-year-old Hayat Boumeddiene. Her whereabouts on Friday was unclear.
Alain Grignard, a senior Belgian counterterrorism official who has investigated jihadi groups in France for decades, said in a telephone interview that, while it was uncertain whether the attacks had been coordinated, it was clear that the attackers had known each other and been part of the same network. He said their training and expertise showed that they were "not kids from the poor, working-class suburbs who just decided to do this."
The attack on the kosher store in Porte de Vincennes appeared to have been calculated to distract attention from the Kouachi brothers as they tried to avoid capture by the police officers who had been searching for them since Wednesday, Grignard said.
After a fruitless chase that extended into northern France and back toward Paris, the police tracked the brothers early Friday to a printing plant in Dammartin-en-Goele, a village 25 miles north of Paris. The brothers, armed with Kalashnikov rifles and a grenade launcher, seized the plant and took one person hostage.
The police said the brothers had been located by helicopters equipped with heat sensors. Shortly afterward, residents of Dammartin-en-Goele, a sleepy rural village of 8,000, saw what looked like commandos drop from helicopters on ropes.
Planes at Charles de Gaulle Airport nearby were advised to avoid certain runways as a precaution.
Officials ordered residents to stay indoors and close window shutters. Students were locked down in local schools, and police officers sealed off all roads.
While the brothers took control of the printing plant, the crisis took an unnerving turn when their associate, Coulibaly, seized hostages at the kosher supermarket around 30 miles away.
Coulibaly, who the authorities said had gunned down a female police officer Thursday in Montrouge, a suburb south of Paris, threatened to kill his hostages if the police attacked the Kouachi brothers.
The authorities said they believed that Coulibaly was part of the same jihadi network as the Kouachi brothers, and issued photographs of him and Boumeddiene. Both were described as armed and dangerous.
In a measure of the jitters pervading Paris during the sieges, the police ordered shopkeepers on Rue des Rosiers, a street with many Jewish-owned businesses, to close as a precaution. The French news media said the Grand Synagogue of Paris had closed for security reasons, not hosting Shabbat services for the first time since World War II.
In an effort to calm the rising alarm, Hollande sought to assure the public that Paris remained safe. He walked, escorted by bodyguards, from his office at the Elysee Palace in the center of the city to the nearby headquarters of the Interior Ministry.
"France is going through a trying time," he told officials at the ministry, vowing to regain control after attacks he described as "the worst of the past 50 years."
With helicopters circling Dammartin-en-Goele as a cold drizzle fell, the police established contact with the brothers ensconced in the printing plant and began negotiations.
"They said they wanted to die as martyrs," said Mohamed Douhane, a senior police officer. "They are behaving like two determined terrorists who are certainly physically exhausted, but who want to escape with one last big show of force and heroic resistance. They feel trapped and know that their last hours have come."
The brothers also contacted BFMTV, a French broadcaster, and Cherif Kouachi told the station by telephone that he had been sent on a mission by al-Qaida in Yemen.
Apparently responding to U.S. officials who said his older brother, Said, had gone to Yemen and had met there with Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born al-Qaida chief who was later killed in a drone strike, Cherif told the station: "I was sent, me, Cherif Kouachi, by al-Qaida of Yemen. I went over there, and it was Anwar al-Awlaki who financed me."
Coulibaly, at the kosher supermarket, also spoke with the broadcaster but said that he was an operative of the Islamic State, the militant group that has seized parts of Iraq and Syria. He said his attack had been coordinated with the Kouachi brothers, BFMTV reported.
After hours of unsuccessful negotiations, the police decided to take the offensive, starting raids about 5 p.m., just as dusk fell.
Contento, the police union spokesman, said both Kouachi brothers were killed in an assault that lasted just a few minutes.
"The two suspects have been killed, and the hostage has been freed," he said. "The special counterterrorism forces located where the terrorists are and broke down the door. They took them by surprise."
With nearly simultaneous raids north and east of Paris, heavily armed police units finally halted an Islamist militant rampage that had started Wednesday with a massacre at a satirical newspaper, continued Thursday with a roadside killing and, in a final spree of violence Friday, left shoppers at a kosher supermarket captive to a gunman who had lined the premises with explosives.
The militants suspected of orchestrating France's worst spasm of terrorism since the 1954-62 Algerian War - two brothers of Algerian descent and an associate of African origins - were killed. Also dead were four of the people held hostage at Hyper Cacher, the kosher supermarket in eastern Paris.
Altogether, 20 people, including the three militants, died in three days of bloodshed that President Francois Hollande, in a solemn address to the nation Friday, described as the work of "madmen, fanatics" who had created "a tragedy for the nation that we were obliged to confront."
During the assault by police officers on the kosher supermarket, special forces were sprayed with bullets, said Christophe Tirante, a senior police official.
The police also said the supermarket had been booby-trapped, making it especially hard to get to the hostage taker.
Rocco Contento, a spokesman for the Unité SGP police union in Paris, said the police had been helped by someone hiding in a cold meat locker in the supermarket who had texted helpful messages.
Denouncing the attack on the kosher store as a "terrifying act of anti-Semitism," Hollande saluted the security forces for their "courage, bravura and efficiency," but warned that France was "not finished with the threats of which it is the target."
Also far from over are the shock waves created by a drama that sharply escalated longstanding worries about France's impoverished immigrant suburbs and the radicalization of disenfranchised young people on society's margins. And there remain many questions about the failure of the French security apparatus to disrupt the actions of militants who had links to operatives working with al-Qaida in Yemen, who had been known to the police for years, and who had been closely monitored by the intelligence services.
Concerns about further attacks were underlined by remarks Friday from Harith al-Nadhari, a militant cleric who speaks for al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. The Associated Press reported that he had issued a recording on the group's Twitter feed that denounced the "filthy" French and called them "the heads of infidelity who insult the prophets."
Hailing the dead militants as "hero mujahedeen," Nadhari warned France: "It is better for you to stop striking Muslims so you can live in peace. But if you only wish for war, then rejoice; you will not enjoy peace as long as you wage war on God and his prophets and fight Muslims."
The events are already resonating in French politics and could further strengthen a surging far-right party, the National Front, which has railed against what it says is the failure of immigrants, and Muslims in particular, to integrate into French society.
But police raids Friday - one on a printing plant in Dammartin-en-Goele, a village near Charles de Gaulle Airport north of Paris, and the other on the kosher store in Porte de Vincennes at the eastern edge of the city - eased a dark and at times panicked mood that had gripped the public and politicians since the massacre of 12 people at the Charlie Hebdo newspaper on Wednesday.
Fear that the crisis was slipping beyond the control of Hollande's already beleaguered Socialist government had stirred calls from some conservative politicians for the imposition of a state of emergency. There had also been several retaliatory attacks on mosques, and an explosion at a kebab shop in eastern France.
Hollande, denouncing both racism and anti-Semitism, said the week's mayhem had "nothing to do with Islam" and described unity as the country's "best weapon."
Said Kouachi, 34, the older of the two brothers suspected of carrying out the attack on Charlie Hebdo, had traveled to Yemen in 2011 and received terrorist training from al-Qaida's affiliate there before returning to France, according to U.S. officials.
His younger brother, Cherif Kouachi, 32, a sometime pizza delivery man and fishmonger, said he, too, had trained in Yemen. He had been arrested in France in 2005 as he prepared to leave for Syria, the first leg of a trip he had hoped would take him to Iraq; he was convicted three years later.
During the attack on the newspaper, the assailants identified themselves as part of al-Qaida in Yemen, also known as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, and shouted, "Allahu akbar," meaning, "God is great." Their open embrace of Islam during an act of violence was seized on by those who had been warning about what they called the gulf between Islam and the values of the West.
The hostage taker at the kosher supermarket was identified as Amedy Coulibaly, a 32-year-old Frenchman of African descent who had shot and killed a police officer in the south of Paris on Thursday. He was a friend of the younger Kouachi brother, Cherif. The police said that both Coulibaly and Cherif Kouachi were followers of Djamel Beghal, a French-Algerian champion of jihad who was jailed in 2001 for planning an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Paris.
The police said Coulibaly had an accomplice, identified by the authorities as 26-year-old Hayat Boumeddiene. Her whereabouts on Friday was unclear.
Alain Grignard, a senior Belgian counterterrorism official who has investigated jihadi groups in France for decades, said in a telephone interview that, while it was uncertain whether the attacks had been coordinated, it was clear that the attackers had known each other and been part of the same network. He said their training and expertise showed that they were "not kids from the poor, working-class suburbs who just decided to do this."
The attack on the kosher store in Porte de Vincennes appeared to have been calculated to distract attention from the Kouachi brothers as they tried to avoid capture by the police officers who had been searching for them since Wednesday, Grignard said.
After a fruitless chase that extended into northern France and back toward Paris, the police tracked the brothers early Friday to a printing plant in Dammartin-en-Goele, a village 25 miles north of Paris. The brothers, armed with Kalashnikov rifles and a grenade launcher, seized the plant and took one person hostage.
The police said the brothers had been located by helicopters equipped with heat sensors. Shortly afterward, residents of Dammartin-en-Goele, a sleepy rural village of 8,000, saw what looked like commandos drop from helicopters on ropes.
Planes at Charles de Gaulle Airport nearby were advised to avoid certain runways as a precaution.
Officials ordered residents to stay indoors and close window shutters. Students were locked down in local schools, and police officers sealed off all roads.
While the brothers took control of the printing plant, the crisis took an unnerving turn when their associate, Coulibaly, seized hostages at the kosher supermarket around 30 miles away.
Coulibaly, who the authorities said had gunned down a female police officer Thursday in Montrouge, a suburb south of Paris, threatened to kill his hostages if the police attacked the Kouachi brothers.
The authorities said they believed that Coulibaly was part of the same jihadi network as the Kouachi brothers, and issued photographs of him and Boumeddiene. Both were described as armed and dangerous.
In a measure of the jitters pervading Paris during the sieges, the police ordered shopkeepers on Rue des Rosiers, a street with many Jewish-owned businesses, to close as a precaution. The French news media said the Grand Synagogue of Paris had closed for security reasons, not hosting Shabbat services for the first time since World War II.
In an effort to calm the rising alarm, Hollande sought to assure the public that Paris remained safe. He walked, escorted by bodyguards, from his office at the Elysee Palace in the center of the city to the nearby headquarters of the Interior Ministry.
"France is going through a trying time," he told officials at the ministry, vowing to regain control after attacks he described as "the worst of the past 50 years."
With helicopters circling Dammartin-en-Goele as a cold drizzle fell, the police established contact with the brothers ensconced in the printing plant and began negotiations.
"They said they wanted to die as martyrs," said Mohamed Douhane, a senior police officer. "They are behaving like two determined terrorists who are certainly physically exhausted, but who want to escape with one last big show of force and heroic resistance. They feel trapped and know that their last hours have come."
The brothers also contacted BFMTV, a French broadcaster, and Cherif Kouachi told the station by telephone that he had been sent on a mission by al-Qaida in Yemen.
Apparently responding to U.S. officials who said his older brother, Said, had gone to Yemen and had met there with Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born al-Qaida chief who was later killed in a drone strike, Cherif told the station: "I was sent, me, Cherif Kouachi, by al-Qaida of Yemen. I went over there, and it was Anwar al-Awlaki who financed me."
Coulibaly, at the kosher supermarket, also spoke with the broadcaster but said that he was an operative of the Islamic State, the militant group that has seized parts of Iraq and Syria. He said his attack had been coordinated with the Kouachi brothers, BFMTV reported.
After hours of unsuccessful negotiations, the police decided to take the offensive, starting raids about 5 p.m., just as dusk fell.
Contento, the police union spokesman, said both Kouachi brothers were killed in an assault that lasted just a few minutes.
"The two suspects have been killed, and the hostage has been freed," he said. "The special counterterrorism forces located where the terrorists are and broke down the door. They took them by surprise."
© 2015, The New York Times News Service
Track Latest News Live on NDTV.com and get news updates from India and around the world
