Hyper Cacher, the kosher grocery store attacked in January during a three-day terror spreein the French capital, reopened Sunday amid heavy security, as France tries to move on from the deadliest terror attacks in years, reports The Wall Street Journal.
“I came here to say the French Republic is doing everything so that all French people are protected from the threat of terrorism and so that we can live in our country freely,” said French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve.
He was the first customer Sunday morning at the shop, which was devastated by gunman Amedy Coulibaly on January 9th in an attack that left four Jews dead and ended with an assault by French special forces after a five-hour standoff. Mr. Coulibaly claimed to have coordinated his attack with brothers Said and Chérif Kouachi, who two days earlier killed 12 people in a brutal attack on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
Since the attacks, the store has been closed, behind barriers where thousands of people laid flowers and other tributes in solidarity with the victims. All the staff who were working at the time of the attack are on sick leave and the Hyper Cacher chain is ready to take them back whenever they want to come back in any of the group’s 13 stores, said Laurent Mimoun, one of the owners of Hyper Cacher.
“We wanted to reopen quickly and to show we are not defeated and not afraid,” said Mr. Mimoun on Sunday morning on the store’s doorstep. “It was important for the victims’ relatives and the people in the neighbourhood.”
He said the constant presence of armed policemen is reassuring for customers and staff.
“The reopening is a strong signal that life goes on, we must not give up,” said Eric Cohen, father of Yohan Cohen, who was killed in the attack.
The attack on the kosher store, one of the deadliest against French Jews since World War II, was deeply unnerving for France’s Jewish community, the world’s third-largest after Israel and the U.S., according to most estimates. It was by no means isolated, coming against a backdrop of violence and intimidation.
The French government made a strong appeal to French Jews to stay in France, as many are moving to Israel. The government deployed 120,000 security forces on the ground to reassure them, including 10,000 military, the highest number of troops in France since a wave of violence related to the Algerian War hit the country more than 50 years ago.
Thousands of armed guards were sent to patrol areas with heavy pedestrian traffic and to guard vulnerable buildings such as synagogues and Jewish cultural centers. The police deployment has been partly scaled down and police authorities are constantly evaluating the needs of surveillance, an interior ministry’s spokeswoman said. “All the 120,000 officers are still ready to be deployed anytime,” she added.
Still, the military deployment, which was originally planned to last for a few weeks, has been extended at least until the summer, putting a strain on the French army which was already spread thin after the government decided to intervene in three different conflicts in Africa and the Middle East over the past three years.
“To keep 10,000 soldiers on the streets 24/7 we need to keep a pool of twice or three times as many troops on alert,” said Colonel Gilles Jaron, spokesman for the French army. He said the number of soldiers on patrol will later this month be reduced to 7,000, with a reserve of 3,000 ready to intervene.
The military presence is costing the army about €1 million a day. The budget planned to finance such operations will be exhausted well before the summer and the army says it will have to find money elsewhere.
The high security operation isn’t only straining institutions but is also harsh for the troops, Colonel Jaron said. Soldiers were wounded by a knife attack outside a Jewish center in the southern city of Nice in early February.
Read more of this UPI report published by The Wall Street Journal.