Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, the two men suspected of Wednesday’s shooting massacre at the Paris offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo, were killed at around 5 p.m. on Friday afternoon in a firefight with police at a building situated on an industrial estate north-east of Paris.
A few minutes later, in Paris, police stormed a kosher supermarket on the south-east edge of the city where a gunman with links to the Kouachi brothers was holding a reported 16 people hostage throughout the afternoon. The gunman, Amedy Coulibaly, had demanded that the police allow the Kouachi brothers to go free. Coulibaly was killed in the police action, while four hostages were found dead. The prosecution authorities said the initial evidence, which included eyewitness statements, suggested that the four had been killed at the start of the siege. Four other people were reported to be seriously wounded.
Speaking after the separate sieges ended Friday, French President François Hollande warned that France “has not finished with the threats that target it” and called for “vigilance, unity and mobilisation”.
It was at around 1p.m. on Friday when Coulibaly opened fire outside the kosher supermarket before charging inside, armed with two automatic rifles. There were conflicting reports of the number of victims from his shots outside the store, with some French media reporting one person to have been wounded.
It was initially reported that the Kouachi brothers were holding a man hostage in the building belonging to a printing company in the small town of Dammartin-en-Goële, about 35 kilometres north-east of Paris and close to Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle airport. However, it later emerged that the owner of the company, Création Tendance Découverte (CDT), had been briefly taken hostage but was released by the Kouachis between 10 a.m. and 10.30 a.m. Meanwhile, a CDT employee had successfully hid on the second floor of the building and survived the subsequent firefight unharmed, having apparently fed information to the police during the day via his mobile phone.
According to daily Le Parisien, which cited police sources, the Kouachis came out of the building firing their automatic weapons at police, prompting the firefight. One member of the gendarmerie (police) elite commando group, the GIGN, was seriously wounded in the action, according to French media reports which said his condition was not life-threatening.
Earlier, two of Charles-de-Gaulle airport’s runways were closed down because of their proximity to the site of the siege.
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Before either siege had ended, French TV channel BFMTV interviewed separately by phone both Chérif Kouachi and a man claiming to be Coulibaly.
“I was sent, me Chérif Kouachi, by al-Qaeda in Yemen,” Kouachi told the TV station which, shortly after 10 a.m. had called the phone number of the printing company’s offices where the two brothers were under siege, and which Chérif Kouani answered. His statement confirmed the recollections of survivors of the attack on Charlie Hebdo that the brothers had claimed to be from al-Qaeda’s Yemeni branch.
On Thursday a US government official told The New York Times that Saïd Kouachi was known to have travelled to a Yemeni base of the terrorist organisation Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in 2011. Chérif Kouachi told BFMTV: “We were sent by imam Anwar al-Awlaki to avenge the Prophet.” Chérif Kouachi said he had travelled to Yemen, and that Anwar al-Awlaki had paid for his trip.
Anwar al-Awlaki, a US-born cleric who became a senior figure of al-Qaeda in Yemen, had demanded the execution of those responsible for cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad which were published in 2006 by Danish magazine Jyllands-Posten, and which were republished in France by Charlie Hebdo (see more here).
A man introducing himself as Coulibaly called BFMTV shortly after 3 p.m. during the siege of the Kosher supermarket. The channel said he explained that he was calling to find a way of enetering into communication with the police. Questioned by a BFMTV journalist, he said he was acting on behalf of the Syria-based jihadist organisation Islamic State, but had “synchronised” his actions with the Kouachi brothers. “Them Charlie Hebdo, me the police officers,” he told the TV channel. He also stated that he had chosen to attack the kosher store because it was a Jewish business.
Coulibaly was the suspect wanted for shooting dead a policewoman in Montrouge, a suburb south of Paris, on Thursday morning. The 26 year-old officer was shot at point blank range as she attended a traffic accident and died from her wounds shortly after. Her assailant escaped by foot. A 26 year-old woman said by French authorities to be Coulibaly's partner is still wanted by police in connection with the shooting, and is named as Hayat Boumeddiene. She and Coulibaly were the subjects of an appeal for witnesses Tweeted by the Paris police prefecture (see below) in which the pair were described as potentially “armed and dangerous”.
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Radio station France Info cited sources as saying that Coulibaly, 32, first met Chérif Kouachi when both were serving sentences at Fleury-Mérogis prison south of Paris in 2005.
What is certain is that Chérif Kouachi was in 2008 given a three-year prison sentence – with 18 months suspended - for his role in a jihadist cell based in north Paris which sent volunteers to join al-Qaeda forces in Iraq. He was arrested as he himself prepared to leave to fight in Iraq.
Other French media reports said Coulibaly and Kouachi were later suspected by police of planning to free a radical Islamist from jail in France but the case against them was dropped for lack of evidence.
Chérif Kouachi, 32, and Saïd Kouachi, 34, were killed after being on the run for just more than 53 hours following the Charlie Hebdo shootings that left 12 people dead and another 11 wounded late on Wednesday morning. They were first identified after police found Saïd Kouachi’s identity card in their getaway car which they abandoned in north Paris before hijacking another.
Their trace was then lost until Thursday morning, when they were identified earlier as being the two gunmen who held up and robbed a petrol station on the RN2, close to the small towns of Crépy-en-Valois and Villers-Cotterêt, about 25 kilometres north-east of Dammartin-en-Goële. The station's owner recognised them to be Chérif and Saïd Kouachi and immediately informed the police. He also said he saw a rocket-propelled grenade launcher in their car.
Their car was later found abandoned, but they managed to escape a massive search by thousands of police and troops, including several helicopters, in nearby countryside on Thursday and overnight.
They set up siege at the warehouse early on Friday morning after a car chase with police. They had hi-jacked a small Peugeot vehicle in nearby Montagny-Sainte-Félicité shortly after 8 a.m. and appeared to be heading towards Paris when they were identified and pursued by gendarmes along the RN2 trunk road.
The timeline of three days of terror (main article continues further below):
At around 11.30 a.m. on Wednesday January 7th a black Citroën car pulled up close to a building housing the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, at number 10 rue Rue Nicolas-Appert, in north-central Paris. Two men wearing balaclava helmets and dressed in dark military-style clothing got out brandishing automatic weapons believed to be Kalashnikov rifles.
They entered the building, shooting dead its caretaker Frederic Boisseau, 42, in the entrance hall. They then approached Corinne Rey, a cartoonist with Charlie Hebdo who was returning to the offices after picking up her infant daughter from a local nursery. Rey, known as 'Coco', described how she was forced to let the two gunmen into the building. “I had gone to fetch my daughter from the nursery, and when we arrived back at the magazine's entrance two masked and armed men brutally threatened us,” she told newspaper L’Humanité. “They wanted to get in, to go up. I keyed in the code. They shot at Wolinski, Cabu … it lasted five minutes ... I sought refuge under a desk … they spoke perfect French … they claimed allegiance to Al Qaeda.”
Witnesses said they entered the offices, where a weekly editorial meeting was being held, shouting “god is greatest” in Arabic. They then called out for Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier - better known by his penname Charb – and shot dead both him and his police bodyguard, Franck Brinsolaro, 49. Charbonnier, 47, had been given police protection after the magazine and himself were threatened by Islamic extremists following its regular publications of cartoons mocking certain symbols of the Muslim religion.
The gunmen then shot dead the magazine’s cartoonists Jean Cabut (penname Cabu), 76, Georges Wolinski, 80, Bernard Verlhac (penname Tignous), 57, and Philippe Honoré (penname Honoré), 73. They also killed economist Bernard Maris, 68, who contributed to Charlie Hebdo under the name 'oncle Bernard' ('Uncle Bernard'), columnist Elsa Cayat, copy editor Mustapha Ourrad and a visitor to the magazine. Other staff were wounded in the attack, while some managed to hide under furniture.
The gunmen then left the building, filmed by a neighbouring press agency, and sped away in the Citroën car which was briefly blocked by a police patrol car which they shot at, forcing it backwards. Shortly after they drove off they shot and wounded policeman Ahmed Merabet, 42, who they executed as he lay in agony on the pavement. They later abandoned the Citroën in north Paris, when they hi-jacked a Renault Clio.
Inside their abandoned vehicle police found the identity card of Saïd Kouachi. He and his brother Chérif were rapidly identified as the suspected gunmen. From there police lost their trace until the following morning. Meanwhile, police arrested a number of people linked to the brothers in Paris, the eastern town of Charleville-Mézières, in the Ardennes region, and in Reims, in the Champagne region, where forensic experts examined an apartment.
Shortly after 8 a.m. on the morning of Thursday January 8th, a trainee policewoman, Clarissa Jean-Philippe, 26, was shot several times in the back at close range in Montrouge, a suburb south of Paris, as she attended the scene of a traffic accident. She died soon after. A municipal employee who was with her was seriously wounded. The attacker escaped on foot.
A little more than two hours later, two armed men in a Renault Clio robbed a petrol station of food and fuel on the RN2 trunk road, close to the town of Crépy-en-Valois, about 60 kilometres north-east of Paris. The owner recognised the men to be Chérif and Saïd Kouachi and immediately informed the police. He saw a rocket-propelled grenade launcher in their car.
Later that day police released a wanted notice for Amedy Coulibaly, 32, who was identified as the chief suspect in the Montrouge killing. The wanted notice also included a 26 year-old woman known to Coulibaly called Hayat Boumeddiene. After at first dismissing a link with the Kouachi brothers, it emerged on Friday January 9th that Coulibaly was close to Chérif Kouachi.
Meanwhile, thousands of police and military personnel combed countryside around Crépy-en-Valois in their hunt for the Kouachi brothers. Special police commando units were seen searching a small village.
No trace of the brothers was found and it is thought they spent the night hiding in woodland before reappearing at about 8.am. on Friday January 9th when they hijacked a car in nearby Montagny-Sainte-Félicité. Driving south towards Paris along the trunk road RN2 they were recognised by a gendarmerie vehicle which gave chase. The brothers then sought refuge inside a printers’ building on an industrial estate at Dammartin-en-Goële, close to Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle airport.
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President Hollande on Friday evening called for a massive turnout at a public march in Paris on Sunday in protest at the Charlie Hebdo massacre, and which will be joined by a number of foreign political leaders, including German chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.
“I call on all the French to get up together this Sunday to carry the values of democracy, liberty, pluralism, to which we are all attached and which, in a certain way, Europe represents,” said President Hollande.
Having first spoken of his “solidarity” with the families, victims and the wounded, Hollande then expressed his gratitude to the officers who had brought both sieges to an end. “I want to salute the courage, the bravery and the effectiveness of the gendarmes and the police.” He then attacked what he called the “fanaticism” of the individuals involved in the attacks. “Those who have committed these terrorist acts, these cranks, these fanatics, have nothing to do with the Muslim religion,” said Hollande. “Today in this kosher shop an appalling act of anti-Semitism was committed.”
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, speaking on BFMTV, also on Friday evening, admitted that the week’s horrific events illustrated that there had been “cracks” in operations of surveillance of those identified as potential terrorists, which included the Kouachi brothers. He promised “massive” security in place for Sunday’s march in Paris, and in every city and town where parallel rallies take place. “In such moments as those, one must not be afraid,” he said. “What the terrorists are looking for is to impose fear through terror. The reaction that we should have is that of us coming together, [and] not to bury ourselves.”
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This report by Michael Streeter and Graham Tearse.
This article contains many elements from Mediapart's French-language coverage of Friday's events, which can be found here.