French Police Storm Hostage Sites, Killing Gunmen

Charlie Hebdo Suspects Dead in Raid; Hostage Taker in Paris Killed

By DAN BILEFSKY and MAÏA de la BAUMEJAN. 9, 2015

PARIS — A tense, dramatic day of spiraling crises that had paralyzed parts of Paris and its suburbs, drawn an army of law enforcement officers and shaken the French government ended in bloodshed on Friday, as the police conducted simultaneous raids in response to two hostage situations that had extended a wave of terror.

The operations against two suspected militants in a printing factory north of Paris, and against a third man who had seized hostages at a kosher market in the eastern part of the city, began with explosions, the sound of gunfire, and then quiet.

The militants in the factory, two brothers, had set off the terror on Wednesday by spraying the offices of a satirical newspaper with gunfire, massacring 12 people. An associate was suspected of assassinating a police officer on Thursday before taking hostages at the kosher market on Friday. All three were killed in the police operations.

A hostage who had been held by the two brothers was freed unharmed, the authorities said.

Addressing the nation Friday night, President François Hollande saluted the special police forces that had conducted the operations. He called for vigilance and unity against “fanatics.”

“It is our best weapon,” he said. “We can fight against anything that could divide us.”

Mr. Hollande also labeled the attack at the kosher supermarket a horrific “anti-Semitic act.”

 “Following this ordeal, I can assure you: We will emerge even stronger,” he said.

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Hostages were evacuated from a kosher grocery store in eastern Paris on Friday. Credit Michel Euler/Associated Press

Though the immediate crises had ended, France remained deeply traumatized, and a period of mourning began for the 17 victims who had been swept up in the violence. The attack on the satirical newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, has already been called “France’s September 11” by Le Monde.

The attack on Wednesday set off soul-searching about the integration of Muslims in France’s impoverished immigrant suburbs, the radicalization of disenfranchised young people on society’s margins, and the failure of the French security apparatus to fend off the assault by the suspects, who had been known to the police for years and had been closely monitored by the intelligence services.

One of the two brothers, Saïd Kouachi, 34, had traveled to Yemen in 2011 and received terrorist training from Al Qaeda’s affiliate there before returning to France, according to American officials. 

His younger brother Chérif Kouachi, a sometime pizza delivery man and fishmonger, had been arrested in France in 2005 as he prepared to leave for Syria, the first leg of a trip he had hoped would take him to Iraq, and convicted three years later.

During the attack on the newspaper, the assailants identified themselves as being part of Al Qaeda and shouted, “Allahu Akbar,” or “God is great.” Their blatant embrace of Islam during an act of violence has been seized on by those who have been warning about a gulf between Islam and the values of the West.

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Video shows people fleeing a kosher supermarket in Paris after the police stormed the building where an armed man held several hostages on Friday.

Video by Reuters on Publish Date January 9, 2015. Photo by Gabrielle Chatelain/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images.

The events are already resonating in French politics and could embolden the ascendant far-right National Front, which has railed against the failure of immigrants, and Muslims in particular, to integrate into French society.

They could further damage the standing of Mr. Hollande, one of the most unpopular presidents in recent French history, who was already confronting a struggling economy and questions about his leadership.

The attacks have also spawned fears among Muslims. In the hours after the newspaper was targeted, two Muslim places of worship were shot at, and there was an explosion at a kebab shop in eastern France. No one was hurt in those assaults.

The Kouachi brothers had been on the run since the attack on Charlie Hebdo but were tracked to the printing plant in Dammartin-en-Goële, 25 miles north of Paris, early Friday. They were armed and holding a single hostage.

A visual summary of the attack and the events that followed.

OPEN Graphic

After hours of unsuccessful negotiations, during which the brothers told the authorities that they were ready to die as martyrs, the police began the simultaneous raids at about 5 p.m.

Rocco Contento, a spokesman for the Unité S.G.P. police union in Paris, who confirmed that the brothers were dead, said the raids had unfolded rapidly.

“The operation in Dammartin is finished,” Mr. Contento said. “The two suspects have been killed, and the hostage has been freed. The special counterterrorism forces located where the terrorists are and broke down the door. They took them by surprise. It lasted a matter of minutes.”

While the brothers were holding the printing plant, a man said to be an associate, Amedy Coulibaly, seized hostages at Hyper Cacher, a kosher supermarket in Porte de Vincennes.

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The French police released an image of Hayat Boumeddiene, left, and Amedy Coulibaly. The authorities say that Mr. Coulibaly gunned down a female police officer in a suburb of Paris on Thursday, and that Ms. Boumeddiene was also implicated in the attack. Credit Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Mr. Coulibaly, who the police said had gunned down a female police officer in Montrouge, a suburb south of Paris, on Thursday, threatened to kill his hostages if the police attacked the Kouachi brothers.

In a measure of the jitters pervading the city during the daylong siege, the police ordered shopkeepers on Rue des Rosiers, a street with many Jewish-owned businesses, to close as a precaution.

Earlier in the day, the police said that Mr. Coulibaly was believed to be part of the same jihadist network as the Kouachi brothers, and that a terrorism investigation had been opened. While Mr. Coulibaly held the hostages, they issued a photograph of him and appealed for witnesses to come forward.

They also published a photograph of a woman, Hayat Boumeddiene, 26, who they said was also implicated in the Montrouge attack. They said she and Mr. Coulibaly were both armed and dangerous.