DEVELOPMENTS
• Three gunmen killed 12 people at the Paris offices of a satirical newspaper that had drawn Islamic condemnation for publishing profane cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed.
• Police fanned out across Paris searching for the men, at least one of whom had served prison time for terrorist activities.
• Thousands gathered in Paris’ Place de la Republique and elsewhere, waving signs that read “Je Suis Charlie,” or “I Am Charlie.”
• President Barack Obama offered U.S. help in pursuing the gunmen, saying they had attacked freedom of expression and “America’s oldest ally.”
— From news services
TERROR IN EUROPE
Wednesday’s assault on the Paris offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo Wednesday was the deadliest terrorist attack in France for half a century. Some other terror attacks in Western Europe:
• May 24, 2014: Four people are killed at the Jewish Museum in Brussels by an intruder with a Kalashnikov. The accused is a former French fighter linked to the Islamic State group in Syria.
• May 22, 2013: Two al-Qaida inspired extremists run down British soldier Lee Rigby in a London street, then stab and hack him to death.
• March 2012: A gunman claiming links to al-Qaida kills three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi and three paratroopers in Toulouse, southern France.
• Nov 2, 2011: Offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris are firebombed after the satirical magazine runs a cover featuring a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad. No one is injured.
• July 22, 2011: Anti-Muslim extremist Anders Behring Breivik plants a bomb in Oslo then attacks a youth camp on Norway’s Utoya island, killing 77 people, many of them teenagers.
• July 7, 2005: 52 commuters are killed when four al Qaida-inspired suicide bombers blow themselves up on three London subway trains and a bus.
• March 11, 2004: Bombs on rush-hour trains kill 191 at Madrid’s Atocha station in Europe’s worst Islamic terror attack.
• Aug 15, 1998: A car bomb planted by Irish Republican Army dissidents kills 29 people in the town of Omagh, in the deadliest incident of Northern Ireland’s four-decade conflict.
• July 25, 1995: A bomb at the Saint-Michel subway station in Paris kills eight people and injures some 150. It was one of a series of bombings claimed by Algeria’s GIA, or Armed Islamic Group.
— Associated Press
Shouting “Allahu akbar!” as they fired, the men claimed links to al-Qaida in their military-style, noon-time attack on the weekly satirical paper Charlie Hebdo. The publication’s depictions of Islam and Islamic extremists have drawn condemnation and threats before, and it was firebombed in 2011.
Police fanned out around the Paris region in a manhunt. Two police officials named the suspects as Frenchmen Said Kouachi and Cherif Kouachi, brothers and in their early 30s, and 18-year-old Hamyd Mourad, whose nationality wasn’t immediately clear.
One police official said the men had links to a Yemeni terrorist network.
Cherif Kouachi served time in prison after he was convicted in 2008 of terrorism for helping funnel fighters to Iraq’s insurgency. During his trial, he told the court he was motivated by his outrage at television images of torture of Iraqi inmates at the U.S. prison at Abu Ghraib.
Both al-Qaida and the Islamic State group have repeatedly threatened to attack France, which is conducting airstrikes against extremists in Iraq and fighting Islamic militants in Africa.
President Francois Hollande said the attack was a terrorist act “of exceptional barbarism,” adding that other attacks have been thwarted in France in recent weeks.
In a somber address to the nation Wednesday night, Hollande pledged to hunt down the killers, and pleaded with his compatriots to come together in a time of insecurity and suspicion.
“Let us unite, and we will win,” he said. “Vive la France!”
France raised its security alert to the highest level and reinforced protective measures at houses of worship, stores, media offices and transportation facilities. Schools closed across Paris.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the shootings. The Paris prosecutor said that in addition to killing 12, the attack wounded 11 people — four of them seriously.
World leaders, including President Barack Obama, condemned the slaughter as an attack on freedom of expression.
Clad all in black with hoods and carrying assault rifles, the attackers forced one of the cartoonists arriving at the office building with her young daughter to open the door with a security code.
The gunmen headed straight for the paper’s editor, Stephane Charbonnier — widely known by his pen name Charb — killing him and his police bodyguard first, said Christophe Crepin, a police union spokesman.
Minutes later, two men strolled out to a car waiting below, calmly firing on a police officer. A video showed one of the gunmen shooting the wounded officer in the head as he writhed on the ground.
A man who watched in fear from his home across the street said the attackers were so methodical that he first mistook them for France’s elite anti-terrorism forces.
“They knew exactly what they had to do and exactly where to shoot. While one kept watch and checked that the traffic was good for them, the other one delivered the final coup de grace,” he said, declining to be named out of concern for his safety. “I think they were extremely well-trained, and they knew exactly down to the centimeter and even to the second what they had to do.”
Among the dead were eight journalists, including two cartoonists, a guest and two police officers, said Paris prosecutor Francois Molins. He did not identify the 12th victim.
In a video shot from a nearby building and broadcast on TV, one of the men shouted in French, “Hey! We avenged the Prophet Muhammad! We killed Charlie Hebdo.”
Corinne Rey, the cartoonist who was forced to let the gunmen in, said the men spoke fluent French and claimed to be from al-Qaida. In an interview with the newspaper l’Humanite, she said the entire shooting lasted perhaps five minutes, and that she hid under a desk.
Their car was later found abandoned in northern Paris, where the gunmen hijacked another vehicle, French prosecutors said.
Witness Cedric Le Bechec, 33, described the carjacking on his Facebook page. He said he saw “two big black guys get out of a bullet-ridden car with a rocket launcher in hand, eject an old guy from his car and calmly say hi to the public, saying ‘you can tell the media that it’s al-Qaida in Yemen.’ “
A tweeter from al-Qaida’s Yemeni branch, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, said the group is not claiming responsibility, but that it might have inspired the attack. In 2013, al-Qaida magazine Inspire specifically threatened Charb and included an article titled “France the Imbecile Invader.”
Charlie Hebdo has been repeatedly threatened for its caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad and other sketches. Just minutes before the attack, it had tweeted a satirical cartoon of the Islamic State’s leader giving New Year’s wishes.
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