France began a day of mourning for the journalists and police officers shot dead in central Paris on Wednesday as police closed in on two brothers suspected of the killings.
The French capital remained on edge, with a shooting south of the city this morning claiming the life of a policewoman and a suspect package causing the evacuation of the Gare du Nord. No link has been established between the killings at Charlie Hebdo magazine and today’s shootout, police said.
With the suspected gunmen still at large, hundreds of police and soldiers patrolled airports, train stations, schools and newspaper offices while armed officers guarded the main gateways to the city.
“We are confronting an exceptional risk that can lead at any moment to other instances of violence,” Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said. He confirmed that seven people were being questioned in connection with the attack on Charlie Hebdo, with the two suspected perpetrators — brothers Said Kouachi (34) and Cherif Kouachi (32) on the run. They were armed and dangerous, police said.
Unconfirmed reports said they were hiding out in the Oise department in northern France.
Cherif Kouachi served 18 months in prison on a charge of criminal association related to a terrorist enterprise in 2005. He was part of an Islamist cell enlisting French nationals from a mosque in eastern Paris to go to Iraq to fight Americans in Iraq and arrested before leaving for Iraq himself.
The atrocity has spurred outrage in France and around the world. A minute’s silence was observed across the country at midday, with crowds gathering at the Place de la Republique, Notre Dame and other landmarks to show their solidarity with the victims and support for freedom of speech.
“Freedom assassinated” ran Le Figaro’s front page. Le Parisien’s lead headline read: “They won’t kill freedom”.
Charlie Hebdo’s lawyer said the magazine would publish next week and planned a print-run of one million copies.
Prime minister Manuel Valls said France faced a terrorist threat “without precedent” and confirmed the two brothers were known to security services. But he added it was too early to say whether authorities had underestimated the threat they posed. “Because they were known, they had been followed,” he told RTL radio, adding: “We must think of the victims. Today it’s a day of mourning.”
Fears have run high in Europe that jihadis trained in warfare abroad would stage attacks at home. The French suspect in a deadly attack on a Jewish museum in Belgium had returned from fighting with extremists in Syria; and the man who rampaged in the south of France in 2012, killing three soldiers and four people at a Jewish school in Toulouse, received paramilitary training in Pakistan.
"France has been struck directly in the heart of its capital, in a place where the spirit of liberty — and thus of resistance — breathed freely," president Francois Hollande said.
Video captured during the attack showed one of the assailants outside the Charlie Hebdo offices shouting “Allahu Akbar!” (God is Greatest) as shots rang out. Another was seen calmly walking over to a wounded police officer lying on the street and shooting him with an assault rifle. The two men then climbed into a black car and drove off.
In another clip, the men are heard shouting in French: “We have killed Charlie Hebdo. We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad.”
The dead included eight journalists, a guest at the weekly, a maintenance man and two policemen. Some of the magazine’s most renowned cartoonists — Cabu, Charb, Tignous and Wolinski — were among those killed.
Additional reporting: agencies
