The terrorist brothers who murdered 12 people at the Charlie Hebdo magazine have been killed by special forces in Paris, according to multiple news agency reports. Explosions and gunfire ripped through the industrial park close to Charles de Gaulle Airport, as commandos stormed a warehouse where they were holed up with a hostage Friday.
The dramatic intervention came hours after Chérif and Saïd Kouachi had raced away from police and hidden in a print works to the north east of Paris.
Soon after footage of the siege was broadcast all over the world, a third gunman walked into a kosher supermarket 20 miles further south and threatened to kill six hostages unless his fellow terrorists were released.
Special forces launched a simultaneous raid on the supermarket freeing a number of hostages. Reports on injuries and fatalities have not been confirmed by the police, but it has been reported that the third gunman, Amedy Coulibaly, was also killed. He was responsible for shooting dead a policewoman on Thursday.
The dual raids came after at least three members of a French terror cell linked to al Qaeda seized at least seven hostages in two locations around Paris this morning. Police had ordered businesses in Marais, the famous Jewish quarter in central Paris, to shut up for the night in fear of further attacks.
The Kouachi brothers broke through a police roadblock this morning in a hail of bullets. After a car chase with officers, they stormed a print works in Dammartin-en-Goële, imprisoning a member of the staff. More than a thousand police officers and special-forces operatives had the brothers cornered. Hovering above the scene, commandos in helicopters were poised with automatic rifles.
Three elementary schools, hundreds of homes, and half of the airport’s runways were on lockdown as police negotiators tried to convince the Kouachis to spare their hostage. Yves Albarello, MP of Seine-et-Marne, said the gunmen have told police they were ready to “die as martyrs.”
As the siege continued, a ceremony in central Paris was being held to honor the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which lost 10 journalists and cartoonists Wednesday. Patrick Klugman, the deputy mayor of Paris, said: “We are living our kind of 9/11,” he said. “As soon as this attack [happened], Paris citizens came together to show were are not afraid, we are Charlie Hebdo.”
Meanwhile, the town Dammartin-en-Goële was sealed off by police who have blocked exits from the freeway and told 8,000 residents to stay inside. “All residents are requested to remain at home. Children are to be kept safe in school,” a local official said.
The gunmen reached the suburb after shooting their way through a roadblock on the freeway as they approached Paris. An interior ministry spokesman denied reports that anyone had been wounded during the shootout.
It is unclear how the men escaped the police and managed to enter the CTD print works, but a man called Didier called France Info radio to say he had attended an appointment at the plant this morning only to be greeted at the door by the owner and a man whom he assumed to be an armed police officer. “We all shook hands and my client told me to leave,” he said. The man dressed in black holding an automatic weapon said: ‘Go, we don’t kill civilians.’
“I decided to call the police, I guess it was one of the terrorists.”
The apparently calm and professional demeanor of the gunmen has been a feature of this atrocity. Analysts suggested soon after video emerged from the assault on the offices of Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday that the Paris-born brothers must have received significant weapons training.
A senior U.S. intelligence official told the New York Times that Saïd Kouachi, the older brother, spent several months in Yemen in 2011, where he received small-arms and marksmanship training from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, one of the most feared al Qaeda affiliates.
According to a Yemeni intelligence source, Saïd met with the notorious U.S. preacher Anwar al Awlaki. The influential al Qaeda propagandist, who was born in New Mexico, died in a U.S. drone strike later that year. “We do not have confirmed information that he was trained by al Qaeda, but what was confirmed was that he has met with Awlaki in Shabwa,” the Yemeni official told Reuters.
Source: Thedailybeast
