Thank God our children are safe
Three terrorists and four hostages dead but – amid the carnage – a moment of heart-wrenching relief
A FATHER lets out a sob of ecstatic relief as he clutches his son.
A mother, her face a picture of joy, holds her precious child as she flees the scene of a bloody hostage drama in Paris that cost the lives of four innocent people.
In 15 astonishing minutes, police brought a dramatic end to two sieges after three days of terror had paralysed the French capital. Police commandos stormed a Jewish grocery store in a hail of bullets and stun grenades, killing
an Al Qaeda-linked gunman who was holding 15 hostages.
Twelve minutes earlier, and only 25 miles away, another stand-off ended with the deaths of Charlie Hebdo killers, Said and Cherif Kouachi.
Firing their Kalashnikovs, they charged straight into the guns of hundreds of soldiers and police surrounding their final hideout.
The grocery store terrorist, Amedy Coulibaly, 32, gave an interview to a French TV station at the height of the siege in which he swore allegiance to Islamic State and claimed the three days of mayhem had been ‘synchronised’.
Coulibaly confirmed he had shot a policewoman in the south of Paris on Thursday. ‘Them Charlie Hebdo; me the police,’ he said.
One of his hostages had left a telephone line open so police could hear what was happening in the shop and moved in when the gunman began to pray.
The Kouachi brothers, who were trained by Al Qaeda in Yemen, had a hostage they did not know about during their nine-hour siege at a printworks in Dammartin-en-Goele, near Charles de Gaulle airport, northeast of Paris. A 27-year-old graphic designer hid inside a box with his phone for more than six hours and updated police on his phone.
Another man, Michael Catalano, who the brothers held during the stand-off, was able to walk to safety helped by police. The terrorists had told negotia- tors they wanted to ‘die as martyrs’ before mounting their fatal charge. In other developments:
Yemen confirmed Said Kouachi, 34, had fought for Al Qaeda against its forces;
Said, Cherif, 32, and Coulibaly had been part of the same jihadi underground network in Paris sending fighters to Iraq;
The Kouachis had been placed on a watch and no-fly list by both the British and US intelligence;
Coulibaly and Cherif served time in prison together with a notorious Al Qaeda terrorist once based in the UK;
Police patrols were stepped up in London and Manchester amid fears of fresh attacks on Jewish targets in the UK;
David Cameron said he would be joining a unity rally in Paris tomorrow.
Last night French President Francois Hollande spoke to the nation promising ‘all necessary measures will be used’ to protect the French people and called on them to remain united in ‘these difficult times’.
He said the attacks had been carried out by fanatics who had nothing to do with Islam and said the assault on the grocery shop was ‘anti-semitic’.
The country must remain vigilant against the possibility of further attacks, he stressed.
The dual assaults brought to an end France’s biggest security operation with nearly 90,000 police and soldiers deployed initially to hunt down the brothers, and then Coulibaly, after he had shot dead the 27year-old policewoman.
Millions had watched gripped on television as the manhunt for the terrorists had ended in bloody shootouts, car chases and sieges.
At one point seven helicopters and more than 50 police and military vehicles had been involved in a high speeds chase during which shots were fired after the Kouachis broke cover from a forest where they had been sheltering 50 miles north east of Paris.
They were forced in to the industrial estate at Dammartin-en-Goele where they made their last stand.
Local residents were evacuated or ordered to lock themselves in their homes as what was described as ‘a small army’ of soldiers and police surrounded them, throwing a cordon around the area.
‘They said they want to die as martyrs,’ Yves Albarello, a local politician who was inside the command post claimed.
Meanwhile, across Paris, Coulibaly, brandishing his Kalashnikov, wearing a bullet proof vest and firing at shoppers, had stormed the kosher supermarket near the Porte de Vincennes, shooting or taking hostage those inside.
Police said he was accompanied by a woman called Hayat Boumeddiene, 26. They were described as ‘armed and dangerous.’
Her fate was unknown last night amid reports that she was on the run. Unknown to the gunman, several Jewish families were hiding in a freezing store room below, listening to the gunfire and terror above.
It appeared that at one point Coulibaly and the Kouachis were in contact and police shut down all communications around the industrial site. Coulibaly warned a hostage negotiator that if the brothers were
‘I am in the shop, I love you’
killed, he would open fire on his hostages. One woman trapped inside telephoned her mother to say : ‘I am in the shop. I love you.’
Police l ocked down the area, swamping it with hundreds of security forces. Snipers could be seen on rooftops and at windows looking for a clear shot at Coulibaly. Last night there was a huge sense of relief in the French capital, mixed with disbelief and fears of more copycat strikes.
There were difficult questions too for the intelligence services as to why they had stopped their surveillance on the Kouachi brothers when their jihadi terror links going back eight years were so well known.
In a telephone call yesterday, Cherif Kouachi admitted he had been funded by a network loyal to Anwar al-Awlaki, the former American-born leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula who was killed by a drone strike in 2011 in Yemen.
HACKER group Anonymous ‘declared war’ on Islamist terrorists last night saying they would smash their online networks. The group
said it would track down and close social media accounts of militants, in a video and statement published online,
A figure wearing the group’s symbolic Guy Fawkes mask appeared seated in front of a desk with the hashtag #OpCharlieHebdo.
Speaking in French and with his voice obscured electronically, he said: ‘We are declaring war against you, the terrorists.’
In a separate statement posted online the group said ‘freedom of expression has suffered inhuman assault ... and it is our duty to react’.
The move is a novel departure for Anonymous which has previously carried out attacks on government, religious and corporate websites. Many of them were so-called ‘denialof- service’ attacks
ON Wednesday, when two Islamist gunmen killed 12 innocent people at the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, a minority of British commentators, both Muslim and non-Muslim, took a disturbingly ambivalent view.
To this ‘if and but’ brigade, the victims had somehow provoked their murderers: it was an act of vengeance for cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammed.
Yesterday – as the death toll in Paris rose to at l east 17, amid more scenes of bloodshed in the French capital – came confirmation of just how shamefully wrongheaded this position is.
Consider the man snatched by the two on-the-run Charlie Hebdo gunmen and subjected to a petrifying eight-hour siege, before police last night killed the brothers holding him in a shoot-out?
Or the four innocent hostages who were slaughtered amid explosions and gunfire at a Jewish delicatessen in Paris, as police sought to free them from two more Islamist terrorists, linked to the same Al Qaeda cell? What, exactly, had they done to ‘provoke’ their attackers?
What were the ‘ifs and buts’ to explain these terrorist actions?
As the head of MI5 warned on Thursday, the threat to Britain is every bit as great as in France – and, in order to combat it, the public must play an increased part.
All sections of society must help to root out the extremists and silence the preachers of hate, whether i t be in classrooms, prisons or mosques.
And, while the overwhelming majority of Muslims abhor the violence of recent days, community leaders must be quicker to condemn – unequivocally – the acts of mass murder which, with increasing frequency, are being committed against the West in the name of religion.
No more ifs and certainly no more buts.