Welcome to this our fifth day of live coverage of the tragic and horrifying events in Paris, which began on Wednesday with a deadly and rapidly executed armed attack on the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which left 12 dead including a police officer.
The attack was carried out by two brothers, Chérif and Saïd Kouachi. Well-known to French security services, the brothers told bystanders they had been sent by al-Qaida in Yemen and were avenging insults made about the Prophet Mohammed by the magazine’s cartoonists. The massacre sparked a two-day huge manhunt involving tens of thousands of police officers, which finally came to an end late Friday afternoon when police stormed a printworks in Dammartin-en-Goële in the suburbs of Paris.
An accomplice of the brothers, Amedy Coulibaly, had at the same taken and subsequently killed several hostages at a kosher supermarket in the east of Paris. He was also killed after police mounted a raid on the premises which closed off the inner ring road of the city.
A fourth alleged accomplice identified by state officials as a 26-year old-female, Hayat Boumeddiene, is still at large.
A full timeline of events until the ending of the siege can be found here.
Today French president Francois Hollande, various world leaders including the UK’s David Cameron and Germany’s Angela Merkel, and a million French citizens will march in a demonstration of solidarity through the streets of Paris.
France’s prime minister, Manuel Valls, invited people to “come in numbers” and said today’s demonstration would be “a cry for freedom” and a reassertion of “the values of 1789”.
It will be an unusual demonstration that will no doubt go down in history. It will show the strength and dignity of the French people, who will shout their love for liberty and tolerance.
We will have live coverage of events in Paris here throughout the day.
