500 extra soldiers to be deployed in greater Paris: ministry
Five people, including a three-year-old boy, survived hidden inside a refrigerator for five hours
A screengrab taken from an AFP TV video shows members of the French police special forces launching the assault at a kosher grocery store in Porte de Vincennes, eastern Paris, on January 9, 2015. PHOTO: AFP
PARIS:
France will deploy some 500 extra military personnel in the greater Paris region, the defence ministry said on Saturday, the day after twin sieges sowed fear on the streets of the capital.
"We will this morning announce a reinforcement of 500 additional military personnel, in two waves in Ile de France," said the ministry, referring to Paris and the immediate surrounding areas.
France will take "all measures" to ensure the safety of Sunday's march to be attended by mostly European leaders after this week's attacks and is maintaining its highest possible security level in the Paris area, the interior minister said.
"All measures have been taken to assure the security of the rally," he said, after Hollande warned that the threats facing France "weren't over".
With fears spreading in the wake of the attack, the United States also warned of a global threat, telling its citizens to beware of "terrorist actions and violence" all over the world.
Hollande, meanwhile, described the attack on the supermarket as an "appalling anti-Semitic act" and said: "These fanatics have nothing to do with the Muslim religion."
French hunt for gunman's girlfriend
French forces on Saturday were frantically hunting for 26-year-old Hayat Boumeddiene, the girlfriend of Amedy Coulibaly, who died on Friday when security forces stormed a Jewish supermarket in eastern Paris where he had taken terrified shoppers hostage.
Coulibaly, who said he was a member of the Islamic State group, slaughtered four hostages during the assault and called friends from the scene urging them to stage further attacks.
After militant groups issued chilling warnings of fresh attacks, authorities pursued Boumeddiene, said to be "armed and dangerous."
Coulibaly and Boumeddiene are the prime suspects in the earlier murder of policewoman on Thursday just outside the French capital.
A crossbow in her hands and covered top-to-toe in a black headwear and robe that leaves only her eyes visible -- that is the image now circulating of France's most-wanted woman.
Read the full story on France's most-wanted woman here.
March of unity
Hollande held an emergency meeting of key ministers early Saturday, hours after a dramatic end to twin sieges that also resulted in the death of the two brothers who had killed 12 at the offices of the Charlie Hebdo magazine on Wednesday.
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.
A woman holds a sign that reads, "free" during rally in Caen on January 10, 2015. Tens of thousands of people staged rallies across France, authorities said, after three days of terror and twin siege dramas that claimed 17 lives in total. PHOTO: AFP
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu will also travel to Paris to take part in the rally, the official Anatolia news agency reported.
Davutoglu will be the most prominent leader of a majority Muslim country at the rally, joining other world leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron.
His attendance also comes despite growing tensions between Turkey and the European Union over allegations of an erosion of civil and media freedoms under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Davutoglu had this week condemned the massacre by two brothers with jihadist connections at the offices of Charlie Hebdo as "terrorist attack", saying there could be no link between Islam and violence.
The day before
The Kouachi brothers were cornered in a printing business in Dammartin-en-Goele outside Paris Friday after a firefight with police that Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said left Said with a minor neck wound.
The brothers took the manager hostage, later releasing him after he helped Said with his wound, while a second man hid beneath a sink upstairs, said Molins.
The second man was able to text security forces information from inside the premises, a source said, and survived the assault unharmed.
The gunmen had a hefty cache of arms including Molotov cocktails and a loaded rocket-launcher.
One witness described a terrifying face-to-face encounter with one of the suspects, dressed in black, wearing a bullet-proof vest and carrying what looked like a Kalashnikov.
The salesman told France Info radio that one of the brothers said: "'Leave, we don't kill civilians anyhow'."
As French elite forces moved into place around the building, with snipers deployed on roofs and helicopters buzzing overhead, a fresh drama unfolded in eastern Paris with a hail of gunfire around lunchtime.
There, Coulibaly stormed a Jewish supermarket hours before the Sabbath, killing four shoppers and taking others hostage.
However up to five people -- including a three-year-old boy -- survived hidden inside a refrigerator for five hours, with police pinpointing their location using their mobile phones, prosecutors and relatives said.
Police swarmed to the Vincennes area, ordering terrified residents to stay indoors.
Outside the kosher supermarket, an AFP reporter saw at least one body lying at the scene, where the sliding glass door of the shop was completely shattered.
"It's war!" shouted a mother as she pulled her daughter away.
As the sun set shortly after 5:00pm local time, the two militant Charlie Hebdo gunmen charged out of the building with guns blazing before being cut down.
Shortly afterwards security forces moved in on the supermarket, where Coulibaly had just knelt to do his evening prayer when the special forces struck.
BFMTV revealed police were able to exploit a lapse in his defences as he had not hung up his phone after speaking to one of their reporters.
'Clear failings' in intelligence
Questions were also mounting over how the three men -- brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, and supermarket gunman Coulibaly -- had slipped through the security net after it emerged that all three men had a radical past and were known to French intelligence agencies.
As the drama reached its climax, links emerged showing the brothers and Coulibaly were close allies and had worked together.
Molins, the prosecutor, said Coulibaly had "threatened to kill all the hostages" if police moved in on the Kouachi brothers, and he had said the supermarket was booby-trapped.
Cherif Kouachi, 32, was a known militant who was convicted in 2008 for involvement in a network sending fighters to Iraq.
His brother Said, 34, was known to have travelled to Yemen in 2011, where he received weapons training from AQAP.
It also emerged that the brothers had been on a US terror watch list "for years".
Cherif told French TV he was acting on behalf of the Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula while Coulibaly said he was a member of the Islamic State group.
Coulibaly, 32 -- who met Kouachi in prison -- was sentenced to five years in prison in 2013 for his role in a failed bid to break an Algerian militant, Smain Ait Ali Belkacem, out of jail.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the carnage they left in their wake showed there had been "clear failings" in intelligence.
The Islamic State group's radio praised them as "heroes" and Somalia's Shebab militants, al Qaeda's main affiliate in Africa, hailed their "heroic" act.
While the immediate danger appeared to have cleared, a chilling new warning came from AQAP whose top sharia official Harith al Nadhari threatened France with fresh attacks, the SITE monitoring group said.
"It is better for you to stop your aggression against the Muslims, so perhaps you will live safely. If you refuse but to wage war, then wait for the glad tiding."
France will deploy some 500 extra military personnel in the greater Paris region, the defence ministry said on Saturday, the day after twin sieges sowed fear on the streets of the capital.
"We will this morning announce a reinforcement of 500 additional military personnel, in two waves in Ile de France," said the ministry, referring to Paris and the immediate surrounding areas.
France will take "all measures" to ensure the safety of Sunday's march to be attended by mostly European leaders after this week's attacks and is maintaining its highest possible security level in the Paris area, the interior minister said.
"All measures have been taken to assure the security of the rally," he said, after Hollande warned that the threats facing France "weren't over".
With fears spreading in the wake of the attack, the United States also warned of a global threat, telling its citizens to beware of "terrorist actions and violence" all over the world.
French Gendarmes patrol around the building of CTD printing business in the industrial area of Dammartin-en-Goele where two gunmen were held up before being killed yesterday. PHOTO: AFP
Hollande, meanwhile, described the attack on the supermarket as an "appalling anti-Semitic act" and said: "These fanatics have nothing to do with the Muslim religion."
French hunt for gunman's girlfriend
French forces on Saturday were frantically hunting for 26-year-old Hayat Boumeddiene, the girlfriend of Amedy Coulibaly, who died on Friday when security forces stormed a Jewish supermarket in eastern Paris where he had taken terrified shoppers hostage.
Coulibaly, who said he was a member of the Islamic State group, slaughtered four hostages during the assault and called friends from the scene urging them to stage further attacks.
After militant groups issued chilling warnings of fresh attacks, authorities pursued Boumeddiene, said to be "armed and dangerous."
Coulibaly and Boumeddiene are the prime suspects in the earlier murder of policewoman on Thursday just outside the French capital.
Paris est Charlie" (Paris is Charlie) is projected onto the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, on January 9, 2015, to pay tribute to the victims of a deadly attack on the Paris headquarters of French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. PHOTO: AFP
A crossbow in her hands and covered top-to-toe in a black headwear and robe that leaves only her eyes visible -- that is the image now circulating of France's most-wanted woman.
Read the full story on France's most-wanted woman here.
Thousands of people march during a rally along the sea front in Nice on January 10, 2015 in remembrance for the victims of an attack by armed gunmen on the offices of French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris. PHOTO: AFP
March of unity
Hollande held an emergency meeting of key ministers early Saturday, hours after a dramatic end to twin sieges that also resulted in the death of the two brothers who had killed 12 at the offices of the Charlie Hebdo magazine on Wednesday.
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.
A woman holds a sign that reads, "free" during rally in Caen on January 10, 2015. Tens of thousands of people staged rallies across France, authorities said, after three days of terror and twin siege dramas that claimed 17 lives in total. PHOTO: AFP
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu will also travel to Paris to take part in the rally, the official Anatolia news agency reported.
Davutoglu will be the most prominent leader of a majority Muslim country at the rally, joining other world leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron.
His attendance also comes despite growing tensions between Turkey and the European Union over allegations of an erosion of civil and media freedoms under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Davutoglu had this week condemned the massacre by two brothers with jihadist connections at the offices of Charlie Hebdo as "terrorist attack", saying there could be no link between Islam and violence.
The day before
The Kouachi brothers were cornered in a printing business in Dammartin-en-Goele outside Paris Friday after a firefight with police that Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said left Said with a minor neck wound.
The brothers took the manager hostage, later releasing him after he helped Said with his wound, while a second man hid beneath a sink upstairs, said Molins.
A photo shows bullet holes on a door and the facade of a kosher grocery store in Porte de Vincennes, eastern Paris, on January 10. PHOTO: AFP
The second man was able to text security forces information from inside the premises, a source said, and survived the assault unharmed.
The gunmen had a hefty cache of arms including Molotov cocktails and a loaded rocket-launcher.
One witness described a terrifying face-to-face encounter with one of the suspects, dressed in black, wearing a bullet-proof vest and carrying what looked like a Kalashnikov.
The salesman told France Info radio that one of the brothers said: "'Leave, we don't kill civilians anyhow'."
As French elite forces moved into place around the building, with snipers deployed on roofs and helicopters buzzing overhead, a fresh drama unfolded in eastern Paris with a hail of gunfire around lunchtime.
French police vehicles take position outside the Hyper Casher kosher grocery store near Porte de Vincennes in eastern Paris. PHOTO: AFP
There, Coulibaly stormed a Jewish supermarket hours before the Sabbath, killing four shoppers and taking others hostage.
However up to five people -- including a three-year-old boy -- survived hidden inside a refrigerator for five hours, with police pinpointing their location using their mobile phones, prosecutors and relatives said.
Police swarmed to the Vincennes area, ordering terrified residents to stay indoors.
Outside the kosher supermarket, an AFP reporter saw at least one body lying at the scene, where the sliding glass door of the shop was completely shattered.
"It's war!" shouted a mother as she pulled her daughter away.
As the sun set shortly after 5:00pm local time, the two militant Charlie Hebdo gunmen charged out of the building with guns blazing before being cut down.
Shortly afterwards security forces moved in on the supermarket, where Coulibaly had just knelt to do his evening prayer when the special forces struck.
BFMTV revealed police were able to exploit a lapse in his defences as he had not hung up his phone after speaking to one of their reporters.
'Clear failings' in intelligence
Questions were also mounting over how the three men -- brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, and supermarket gunman Coulibaly -- had slipped through the security net after it emerged that all three men had a radical past and were known to French intelligence agencies.
As the drama reached its climax, links emerged showing the brothers and Coulibaly were close allies and had worked together.
Molins, the prosecutor, said Coulibaly had "threatened to kill all the hostages" if police moved in on the Kouachi brothers, and he had said the supermarket was booby-trapped.
Cherif Kouachi, 32, was a known militant who was convicted in 2008 for involvement in a network sending fighters to Iraq.
His brother Said, 34, was known to have travelled to Yemen in 2011, where he received weapons training from AQAP.
It also emerged that the brothers had been on a US terror watch list "for years".
Cherif told French TV he was acting on behalf of the Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula while Coulibaly said he was a member of the Islamic State group.
Coulibaly, 32 -- who met Kouachi in prison -- was sentenced to five years in prison in 2013 for his role in a failed bid to break an Algerian militant, Smain Ait Ali Belkacem, out of jail.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the carnage they left in their wake showed there had been "clear failings" in intelligence.
The Islamic State group's radio praised them as "heroes" and Somalia's Shebab militants, al Qaeda's main affiliate in Africa, hailed their "heroic" act.
While the immediate danger appeared to have cleared, a chilling new warning came from AQAP whose top sharia official Harith al Nadhari threatened France with fresh attacks, the SITE monitoring group said.
"It is better for you to stop your aggression against the Muslims, so perhaps you will live safely. If you refuse but to wage war, then wait for the glad tiding."