French police officers investigate the scene at the Hyper Casher kosher grocery store near Porte de Vincennes in eastern Paris after police launched an assault killing the gunman holed up in the market and freeing the hostages, Jan 9, 2015. (AFP/Eric Feferberg)
PARIS: French forces killed the two brothers behind the massacre at Charlie Hebdo and a radical ally Friday (Jan 9) after three blood-soaked days that left 17 other people dead and shook the nation to its core.
Police were still hunting for another suspect, the girlfriend of one of the men, early Saturday, hours after the fiery showdown with the gunmen who had kept France on edge since killing 12 people Wednesday at the offices of the satirical weekly.
The heavily armed brothers were cornered in a small town northeast of Paris while a third man took terrified shoppers hostage in a Jewish supermarket, where four died and seven were hurt including three police officers. Explosions rang out at sunset at the two hostage sites as police moved in.
As France’s bloodiest week in decades drew to a close, the mood began to turn to one of grim national reflection. President Francois Hollande said he would attend a march of unity in Paris on Sunday expected to draw hundreds of thousands of people as well as the leaders of countries including Germany, Britain, Italy and Spain.
Questions were also mounting over how the three men – brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, and supermarket gunman Amedy Coulibaly – had slipped through the security net after it emerged that all three were known to the intelligence agencies. Coulibaly’s girlfriend Hayat Boumeddiene, who was wanted by police in connection with the killing Thursday of a policewoman, was still on the loose.
With fears spreading in the wake of the attack, the United States warned of a global threat, telling its citizens to beware of “terrorist actions and violence” all over the world.
Hollande, meanwhile, warned the threats facing France “weren’t over”. He described the attack on the supermarket as an “appalling anti-Semitic act” and said: “These fanatics have nothing to do with the Muslim religion.”………
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