Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Bloody end to Paris sieges
At least four hostages slain Fugitive brothers killed Supermarket gunman dead, wife on the run
THE FRENCH terror attacks which played out on TV screens across the world yesterday ended with the deaths of the two fugitive brothers who shot dead 12 people when they attacked the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday.
They were killed when police stormed a printing plant north of Paris, freeing their hostage.
But at least four other hostages died at a separate location, apparently along with armed gunman Amedy Coulibaly, at a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris.
His accomplice, his wife Hayet Boumeddiene, was still on the run at publication time last night. There were also reports last night that another male gunman had escaped the supermarket siege.
There were conflicting reports about whether Coulibaly had been killed in the assault.
The two small groups seized hostages at two separate locations around the French capital yesterday, surrounded by thousands of French security forces as the city shut down a famed Jewish neighbourhood and scrambled to protect residents and tourists from further attacks.
French police stormed the printing plant where the brothers, Cherif Kouachi, 32, and Said Kouachi, 34, were holed up with their hostage.
Security forces had surrounded the building for most of the day and, after several explosions, police SWAT forces could be seen on the roof. A police helicopter landed nearby.
Audrey Taupenas, spokeswoman for Dammartin-en-Goele, the town near the Charles de Gaulle airport, said the brothers had died in the clash.
Almost simultaneously, police struck at the supermarket where Coulibaly had threatened to kill hostages if French authorities launched an assault on the two brothers, a police official said.
The official, who was not authorised to discuss the situation with the media, said the two sets of hostage- takers knew one another.
At the kosher grocery store near the Porte de Vincennes neighbourhood, the gunmen burst in shooting just a few hours before the Jewish Sabbath began, declaring “You know who I am”, according to the official.
The attack came before sundown when the store would have been crowded with shoppers.
The official said the gunman is also believed to be responsible for the killing of a Paris policewoman on Thursday.
France has been on high alert since the country’s worst terror attack in decades – the massacre on Wednesday in Paris at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which left 12 people dead.
Trying to fend off further attacks yesterday, the Paris mayor’s office shut down all shops along Rosiers Street in the city’s famed Marais neighbourhood in the heart of the tourist district.
The street is also only a kilometre away from Charlie Hebdo’s offices.
Police said 100 pupils were under lockdown in schools nearby, and that the highway ringing Paris was closed.
Hours before, and 40km away, a convoy of police trucks, helicopters and ambulances streamed toward Dammartin- en- Goele to apprehend the brothers, who had hijacked a car in a nearby town after more than two days on the run.
Cherif Kouachi was convicted of terrorism charges in 2008 for ties to a network sending jihadis to fight US forces in Iraq.
A Yemeni security official said Said Kouachi was suspected of having fought for al-Qaeda in Yemen. Another senior security official said Kouachi was in Yemen until 2012.
Charlie Hebdo had long courted controversy with satirical attacks on Islam, as well as other religions and political leaders.