Summary
As night falls in Paris, here is a round-up of the latest developments in the aftermath of a bloody week for France:
- Police say Hayat Boumeddiene, sought for suspected involvement in the killings carried out by her partner, Amedy Coulibaly, is feared to be “armed and dangerous”. French media reports this evening say Boumeddiene is now thought to have left France before this week’s attacks and could be in Syria.
- Four hostages who were killed on Friday when Coulibaly attacked a Jewish grocery store have been named. They were Yoav Hattab, Philippe Braham, Yohan Cohen and François-Michel Saada.
- The family of Ahmed Merabet, the police officer murdered outside the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday, have made an emotional appeal for calm in the wake of the attacks. The officer’s brother, Malek Merabet, said:
I address this to all the racists, the Islamophobes and the antisemites. You mustn’t mix up extremism with Muslims. The mad men have no colour nor religion.
I don’t want there to be any incidents in France or the world … Islam is a religion of peace, of love … My brother was a Muslim and he was killed by two terrorists, by false Muslims.
- In vivid testimony, Michel Catelano, the man held hostage by Cherif and Said Kouachi in Dammartin on Friday, told how he had dressed the wound of one of the brothers, and hid from them the presence of another employee, who managed to contact the police.
- Manuel Valls, the French prime minister, warned that the country must not lower its guard and said terrorist networks would be dismantled. Ahead of a unity rally in Paris on Sunday, interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said more than 5,500 police and military personnel would ensure the safety of the million people expected to attend.
- Today, hundreds of thousands of people rallied across France in support of those killed this week. Reports suggested that 700,000 had joined marches in towns and cities across the country.
Updated
Boumeddine 'left France before attacks' – reports
There are reports in Le Monde and other parts of the French media that Hayat Boumeddiene – currently labelled France’s most-wanted woman for her suspected involvement in the atrocities committed by her partner, Amedy Coulibaly – could have fled the country before this week’s attacks took place.
Le Monde reports that Boumeddiene is suspected to have flown to Istanbul on 2 January, from where she reportedly travelled to Syria.
More details have emerged of the astonishing testimony of Michel Catelano, who was held hostage by Cherif and Said Kouachi in his office in Dammartin on Friday. I’ve taken the translation of his interview from Sky News:
It began around 8.30, the doorbell rang …
I could see from the window that there was a man with a rocket-launcher and a Kalashnikov. I could immediately see we were in a dangerous situation … I told my employee [Lilian Lepere, who hid under a sink on the second floor throughout the siege and was able to text police] to hide.
I thought that was the end … but they were not aggressive. They said they just wanted to come in … I prepared a coffee for them … that’s how it began.
It lasted about an hour. One of my suppliers arrived at 9am, before the gendarmes … I told these people my supplier had nothing to do with them and could they let him go, so they did.
Then the gendarmes came down, they shot at the gendarmes and I took refuge in my office …
Catelano says the Kouachis then came looking for him and he came out of the office telling them: “Don’t worry, I am here.”
It’s amazing I could say that to them.
I noticed that one of them was wounded … I said, if you want I could look after you. He sat down and I helped him with a plaster – I could see it was a suerpficial wound.
I said could I leave, they said no, not immediately … I felt things could changed; I felt they were nervous.
I again did the bandage and said can I leave now? They said yes, go on.
I thought, shall I say to them there is somebody else in the company? That was the most difficult thing for me [leaving when Lepere was still hidden inside].
I got out, the gendarmes were wonderful.
I knew Lilian was there, of course – I told him to hide. I don’t know how I managed to stay calm; I stayed calm throughout.
Right from the start I imagined I would not be alive for long.
In fact they weren’t aggressive – even when they shot at the gendarmes I didn’t get the imprsssion they were going to harm me. They had an ounce of humanity because they let me out.
French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve has just been giving more details of security measures in place for tomorrow’s unity rally in Paris:
Because of the expected number of people - we expect several hundreds of thousands of people in the streets of Paris – the French people will be demonstrating their attachment to the values of the repubilc and to freedom.
Terrorist attacks against France target a country that represents human rights in their most universal way.
He says several European leaders and representatives from countries across the world will attend the rally:
Because they want to share our mourning, we have to thank our foreign friends.
He says there will be two itineraries for the rally, with overlapping routes, in order to keep the expected huge numbers of marchers moving.
There will be a public order plan of exceptional magnitude to make sure the rally goes well and to guarantee maximum security.
Twenty-four units of the national reserve, and public order representatives, will be present and responsible for ensuring ease of arrival and to show the public where they have to go.
Some 150 civil police officers will guard the visiting dignitaries, he says.
There will be some sharp-shooters on the roofs. Roofs and drains will be inspected in advance.
Parking will be forbidden to all vehicles on the two routes. [Several metro stations] will be closed from 12pm.
The terror alert will be maintained at its highest level in the île-de-France.
Updated
Hundreds of thousands join rallies
AFP estimates that nearly a quarter of a million people have taken part in marches across France today, ahead of Sunday’s unity rally in Paris. Here are some of the images – the first from Marseille:
Here is Toulouse:
And Lille:
Press Association has this report on London’s plans to show solidarity with Paris tomorrow:
In a tribute that will coincide with the rallies across France, London landmarks including Tower Bridge and Trafalgar Square will display the colours of the French Tricolore national flag from 4pm.
Tower Bridge will display the flag’s colours from 4pm until 5.30pm, after which the bridge will go dark, while the emblem will also be projected on to the National Gallery.
The Trafalgar Square fountains will rotate the colours of the French national flag, while the London Eye will go dark with the red, white and blue projected on to County Hall behind it.
London mayor Boris Johnson said:
Londoners have been appalled by the distressing scenes in France this week and it is important that we pay tribute to the victims of these attacks, as well as demonstrate our solidarity with the people of Paris.
We should not forget the hundreds of thousands of French citizens who call London their home. Our thoughts will be with them this weekend as they do their best to deal with the agonising scenes we have witnessed.
Joining together in opposition to the ideology of hatred sends the clearest possible message – one of freedom of expression and one of resolve. Nous sommes Charlie.
Malek Merabet is speaking again:
My brother’s death was a waste, a total waste … I’m glad those men were stopped but I would have liked to have seen them.
I don’t want there to be any incidents in France or the world … Islam is a religion of peace, of love …
My brother was a Muslim and he was killed by two terrorists, by false Muslims.
To see any of those images, when my brother was lying on the ground …
He breaks off, crying. The press conference ends.
[This post was updated to include the name of Ahmed Merabet’s brother.]
Updated
Merabet’s partner says she hopes the rally tomorrow will be calm and that all the victims are respected.
Updated
Merabet’s partner says she can only be proud of his commitment to defend others, but for now all they can do is mourn him.
Another woman sitting with her says Merabet was very proud of being a police officer and proud of the French republic. When he went off to work, he never knew what would happen. She says she was worried for him every single day. But you can’t envisage what happened on Wednesday, she adds.
Updated
Answering questions, Malek Merabet says the family is very proud of his brother.
Another family member (apologies, the TV coverage is not identifying the individuals as they speak) says the family thinks it is awful that media around the world have chosen to publish the picture of Ahmed Merabet in the moments before he was shot.
He says the family is opposed to all types of violence.
[This post was updated to include the name of Ahmed Merabet’s brother.]
Updated
The family of Ahmed Merabet, the police officer shot dead outside the offices of Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday, are speaking to the press now.
Merabet’s brother, Malek, speaks first. He says Ahmed was “French, of Algerian origin, of the Muslim faith … very proud to represent the views of the French republic: liberté, égalité, fraternité.” He was due to leave the country soon, he adds.
He loved his job. He was committed. He looked after his mother and his family since his father died 20 years ago … He was the pillar of his family.
[We are] devastated by this barbaric act, we are devastated for all the victims.
I address this to all the racists, the Islamophobes and the antisemites.
You mustn’t mix up extremism with Muslims. The mad men have no colour nor religion.
Stop burning mosques or burning synagogues because you are attacking people … It won’t bring back the dead and it won’t comfort the families.
[This post was updated to include the name of Ahmed Merabet’s brother.]
Updated
French authorities have said they want to know more about the 500 phone calls between Hayat Boumeddiene – the partner of Amedy Coulibaly currently on the run – and the female partner of one of the Kouachis.
In an interview with Associated Press, Christophe Crepin, spokesman for the UNSA police union, said:
We can call this complicity by furnishing of means. We must interrogate her so she explains exactly if she did this under influence, if she did it by ideology, if she did it to aid and abet.
[Boumeddiene] is considered as an important witness to whom we must ask questions. Since 2010, she has had a relationship with an individual whose ideology has been expressed in violence, and by the execution of poor people who were just doing their shopping in a supermarket.
She is a dangerous woman. You must understand we are at war. It’s a war against terrorism since January 7. We have to take precautions.
You must consider her as the companion of a dangerous terrorist who needs to be questioned. If she doesn’t come [to us], she will be found.
Friday's victims named
The Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France, the main French Jewish umbrella organisation, has released the names of the four hostages killed yesterday in the kosher supermarket in Vincennes, eastern Paris.
They were:
- Yoav Hattab
- Philippe Braham
- Yohan Cohen
- François-Michel Saada
Voici les noms des quatre victimes de #Vincennes : Yoav HATTAB, Philippe BRAHAM, Yohan COHEN, François-Michel SAADA.
— CRIF (@Le_CRIF) January 10, 2015
As Jon Henley reports, Crif also condemned the anti-semitic nature of the attack by Amedy Coulibaly, saying:
These French fellow citizens were slaughtered coldly and pitilessly, because they were Jewish.
Updated
Thousands of demonstrators have joined the #JeSuisCharlie rally in Nantes, reports AFP’s Aurélia Moussly:
Nantes: des milliers de manifestants. #CharlieHebdo #AFP pic.twitter.com/oqCMnD4EBI
— Aurélia Moussly (@aureliamoussly) January 10, 2015
Hayat Boumeddiene: what we know
My colleague Jon Henley sends this dispatch on what is known about Hayat Boumeddiene, currently being hunted by French police.
Hayat Boumeddiene, 26, described by police as “armed and dangerous”, is wanted on suspicion of being the accomplice of Amedy Coulibaly in the brutal shooting of a young trainee policewoman in Montrouge on Thursday.
Quoting French police sources, French media have reported there is currently no firm evidence that she was present at or involved in Coulibaly’s hostage-taking at a Jewish supermarket in northern Paris on Friday.
Boumeddiene was born on June 26, 1988, one of seven children, in Villiers-sur-Marne outside Paris. Her mother died when she was just six and her father, Mohamed Boumeddiene, a delivery driver, had difficulty looking after his family. Along with several of her siblings, Hayat was placed in foster care when she was about eight or nine, Le Parisien newspaper reported.
She married Coulibaly in a religious, but not a civil ceremony – meaning the marriage is not recognised in French law – in July 2009. The couple lived for some time together in a flat in Bagneux, a Paris suburb, and Coulibaly moved back in there with her after he was released from jail last year.
The couple were closely acquainted with Cherif Kouachi, one of the two brothers responsible for the Charlie Hebdo massacre, and his wife Izzana Hamyd. According to the Paris prosecutor, François Molins, there was “constant and sustained” telephone contact – more than 500 calls last year – between Boumeddiene and Hamyd, who has been in custody since Wednesday.
Interviewed by police in 2010, Boumeddiene reportedly said she had accompanied Coulibaly and Kouachi on two occasions to visit Djamel Beghal, a radical preacher under house arrest in the Cantal in southern France. Le Monde published photographs of her, wearing full niqab, with Coulibaly in a nearby forest, apparently training with a crossbow.
Boumeddiene, who according to Le Parisien lost her job as a supermarket cashier because she insisted on wearing the full Islamic niqab, told police in her 2010 interview that she had not attended her own wedding ceremony: “In Islam, the woman is not obliged to be present. My father represented me.”
She was also doubtful about true extent of her husband’s faith. “Amedy isn’t really very religious,” Le Monde quoted her as telling police. “He likes having fun. He’s not the sort to walk around all the time in Muslim attire. Men should usually go to the mosque to pray on Fridays but Amedy goes … I should say once every three weeks.”
Updated
Channel 4 News reporter Jonathan Rugman has interviewed Michel Catellano, the man held in Dammartin by the Kouachi brothers yesterday. He says Catellano told him the terrorists said they were acting on behalf of Al-Qaida in Yemen:
Catellano uses the word "polite" to describe Hebdo suspect gunmen. Confirms to me that he treated the wound of one while he was being held.
— Jonathan Rugman (@jrug) January 10, 2015
Catellano: "when I saw them I thought my life was going to end..but they weren't aggressive."
— Jonathan Rugman (@jrug) January 10, 2015
Catellano says gunmen told him to go upstairs for safety before they opened fire on police. They told him "don't worry you will be fine".
— Jonathan Rugman (@jrug) January 10, 2015
Catellano says he told gunmen 3 times he was alone, was terrified they would find the colleague he had hidden upstairs.
— Jonathan Rugman (@jrug) January 10, 2015
Catellano says most difficult moment was when gunmen let him go yet he had to leave hidden Lilian Lapere, his friend, upstairs.
— Jonathan Rugman (@jrug) January 10, 2015
The Paris prosecutor Francois Molins told reporters that Lapere had taken refuge “under a sink in the canteen” upstairs. The 26-year-old graphic designer was “terrified” but managed to communicate with police outside via text message, sending them tactical information about the premises, as well as what the attackers were saying.
French prime minister Manuel Valls has criticised the decision by news magazine Le Point to print on its front page a picture of the last moments of police officer Ahmed Merabet before he was shot dead by the Kouachis on Wednesday.
Valls said he was “disgusted” by the decision, adding that in his view it was something that no French newspaper should show.
Le Point said it had decided to print the image “because it shows the violence, barbarism and cowardice of terrorists … We believe that we can not hide this reality, precisely because it is unbearable.”
Pourquoi nous avons décidé de publier une photo qui montre la barbarie des terroristes. http://t.co/AkzAsfuWGY pic.twitter.com/YT7cYr0tvy
— Le Point (@LePoint) January 10, 2015
You can hear here – with English translation – the interview by French channel BFM TV with Paris gunman Cherif Kouachi, while he was still on the run.
Kouachi, who was killed by police on Friday along with his brother, says the attack on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo was “revenge” against those who offended the prophet Muhammad.
He claims the pair did not target “civilians”. “We are not killers,” he insists.
A reminder that if you’re planning to take part in the rallies and vigils planned across France or elsewhere this weekend, GuardianWitness would like to hear from you. You can submit your photographs here.
Ahead of tomorrow’s unity rally in Paris – see here for more details on that – it’s believed that tens of thousands of people have been taking part in rallies across France today. These photographs are from Nice, in south-eastern France:
Updated
AFP reports that the next issue of Charlie Hebdo magazine, to be published on 14 January, will also be sold outside France:
The “survivors’ issue” of Charlie Hebdo will also be sold outside France next week because of the massive world attention for the satirical weekly following the massacre of its top staff – a turnaround for a publication that just a week ago was on the brink of folding.
The remaining employees of the publication are putting out the special edition next Wednesday, which they say will have one million copies printed instead of the usual 60,000.
The online solidarity slogan #JeSuisCharlie has now been used more than five million times, according to Twitter France, making it the most shared hashtag ever for France-related topics.
[CARTE INTERACTIVE] Retour sur 2 jours de #JeSuisCharlie dans le monde entier... #Solidarité http://t.co/dwbXlMX9gh pic.twitter.com/N3IFxN6Vdr
— Twitter France (@TwitterFrance) January 9, 2015
The French company MLP that Charlie Hebdo is using to distribute its much-awaited issue has done deals with several other press distribution groups, notably Naville in Switzerland and SGEL in Spain, to sell the edition, industry sources said. Negotiations are going on with companies in other countries, such as Canada.
Many other countries that have never seen Charlie Hebdo – a comic-heavy newspaper that delights in breaking taboos and testing the boundaries of taste – are also calling for copies to come their way.
All of the companies involved in getting next week’s newspaper to the public have promised to do so for free, and all money from sales of the issue are to go to the families of the 12 people murdered in the attack on Charlie Hebdo’s offices on Wednesday by two Islamist gunmen.
The massacre wiped out five of the newspaper’s leading cartoonists. The surviving members of the publication have been at work since Friday in premises loaned by the newspaper Libération to produce the new issue. All the surviving staff are working on the issue for free.
Chief editor Gerard Biard, who was in London the day of the attack, said the issue will include cartoons from the whole team – including some from the killed cartoonists.
The sudden global prominence of Charlie Hebdo, which before typically sold only half of its usual 60,000 printed copies in France, has saved it from imminent bankruptcy.
The newspaper, named after the American comicbook character Charlie Brown (“Hebdo” is French slang for weekly), had only in November made a public appeal for donations to keep going. Of the €1m (£780m/$1.2m) it was asking for, it had received only €26,000. Closure seemed inevitable. But now, French media have rallied around the title to offer whatever help it needs, and the French government is looking at releasing public funds to bail out Charlie Hebdo.
Prime minister Manuel Valls even dropped by on Friday as the surviving staff started work to lend his official support to the publication, which has in the past lampooned him and other politicians.
Devout Muslims, though, have been incensed in recent years by some cartoons Charlie Hebdo printed mocking the Prophet Mohammed. In 2011, the newspaper’s offices, empty at the time, were firebombed by suspected Islamists. Any depiction of Mohammed is considered forbidden under Islam.
In 2006, Charlie Hebdo became a major target for Islamists when it reprinted 12 cartoons of the prophet published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in a statement for freedom of expression. The cartoons, including one which showed the Islamic prophet wearing a bomb in a turban, had sparked violent protests in several Muslim countries.
Charlie Hebdo’s staff – including several of those killed – had long refused to bow to demands to avoid such sensitive subjects. Instead they redoubled their provocative efforts.
“The newspaper only defended freedom of expression,” its lawyer, Richard Malka, said this week, adding that it “paid a heavy price for that”.
The Guardian has pledged £100,000 to Charlie Hebdo to assist its continued publication.
You can read more here on News Corp boss Rupert Murdoch’s comments that Muslims “must be held responsible” for the religion’s “growing jihadist cancer” in the wake of the terror attacks in France.
More details have emerged this morning of conversations between the terrorists and journalists during the two sieges yesterday.
RTL has published extracts of Amedy Coulibaly threatening hostages in the kosher supermarket in eastern Paris. The radio station said it was able to record his words after a phone was left off the hook in the store. Condemning the French state, Coulibaly reportedly told the hostages:
They must stop attacking the Islamic State, stop unveiling our women, stop putting our brothers in prison for nothing at all.
It is you who is financing [the government]. You pay taxes.
RTL reports that a hostage then said: “We are obliged to [pay taxes]”, to which Coulibaly replied: “You do not have to. I do not pay taxes.”
You can see more of the RTL report here.
Meanwhile, Igor Sahiri, a journalist with French TV station BFM TV, who spoke to Cherif Kouachi by phone during yesterday’s siege warehouse in Dommartin-en-Goele, has given an account of the conversation to Radio 4’s Today programme. Sahiri rang the office of the warehouse and the phone was answered by the younger brother. Sahiri told the BBC:
He was really prepared. It was somebody very serene. He was very calm. It was just like a normal discussion, no rudeness.
My feeling was that this kind of man is ready to die. They way he was breathless made me feel that this guy was ready to die, was very aware of what would happen at this time.
Sahiri said Cherif Kouachi told him:
We are just telling you we are the defenders of the prophet and that I, Cherif Kouachi, have been sent by Al-Qaida of Yemen and that I went over there and that Anwar Al Awlaki financed me.
Asked if he intended to kill more civilians, Kouachi replied:
Did we kill any civilians in the past two days when you were looking for us? Come on.
We are not killers, we are the defenders of the Prophet, and we kill those who insult him.
You can hear the Radio 4 interview here.
BFM TV also received a call from Coulibaly from the kosher store, who told journalists he and the Kouachi brothers had “synchronised to do the operations”:
We just decided at the start, so they did Charlie Hebdo and I took care of police officers.
The BFM TV report of its exchanges with the terrorists is here.
News agency AFP reports a boosting of security in the French capital:
#BREAKING: 500 extra soldiers deployed in greater Paris: ministry
— Agence France-Presse (@AFP) January 10, 2015
My colleague Jon Henley has filed this report on the latest developments in the hunt for terror suspect Hayat Boumeddiene:
After three days of bloodshed that has left 17 people dead, French security forces are desperately searching for the former partner of one of the three Islamist gunmen killed by police.
Hayat Boumeddiene, described by police as armed and dangerous, is the ex-girlfriend of Amedy Coulibaly, who died on Friday evening when heavily armed elite forces stormed a Jewish supermarket in northern Paris where he was holding at least 15 people hostage.
Coulibaly had killed four shoppers when he entered the kosher store on the Avenue de la Porte de Vincennes carrying two Kalashnikov assault rifles, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.
President François Hollande called an emergency cabinet meeting on Saturday morning, having warned the night before that French people should be prepared for more violence, and urged “vigilance, unity and mobilisation”.
As the hunt intensified for Boumeddiene, wanted in connection with Coulibaly’s fatal shooting of a police officer in Montrouge on Thursday, a badly shaken France prepared for a march of national unity in Paris on Sunday. The British prime minister, David Cameron, and his German, Spanish and Italian counterparts, Angela Merkel, Mariano Rajoy and Matteo Renzi, were due to attend.
You can read the full report here.
Manuel Valls: 'We mustn’t lower our guard'
Manuel Valls, the French prime minister, is speaking in Evry, in the southern suburbs of Paris:
They wanted to demolish the paper Charlie Hebdo, which must carry on. Its special edition next week will be an exceptional moment.
All who said ‘Je suis Charlie’, everyone has understood this symbol …
They [the terrorists] also wanted to attack the strengths of the republic: the police. A police officer who was doing his work was, in very cowardly fashion, killed.
They wanted to attack tolerance. The Jews of France, once again. Four dead yesterday. Without the professionalism of the forces, the figures would have been much higher.
No doubt yesterday we did feel relieved but there is a risk we could forget all this – this will not be the case. We mustn’t lower our guard … it’s essential for the security of the French people.
The forces are going to continue searching to apprehend the accomplices … we want to dismantle these networks. This is our greatest challenge.
Valls mentions French intervention in Mali, saying there are as many Malians in Evry as French people:
This country that is a friend of ours was being attacked … It was Muslims who were being attacked through this terrorism.
On Tuesday parliament is going to have to decide whether we are going to pursue our mission in Iraq.
We have to carry on … of course we have to draw lessons from what has happened … There are always ways for the terrorists to slip in … there are so many people involved in jihadism, in Syria and Iraq.
There are also internal threats … we must never lower our guard, and we have to be really strong, really tough, where the enemies of freedom are concerned.
Turning to tomorrow’s unity march in Paris, Valls goes on:
The rally will be unbelievable, it will remain in the annals of history … It will show the dignity of the French people … do come.
He says transport from Evry to the march will be free tomorrow. Representatives from Arab and Muslim countries will be there, he says, along with representatives of various religions. Secularism is the freedom to believe or not believe, Valls adds:
Terrorism tried to create splits and damage us. Tomorrow we have to give the best response we can possibly give.
Tomorrow’s rally will be a cry for freedom … to the values of 1789.
Updated
An imam who knew Cherif Kouachi, one of the brothers responsible for the attack on Charlie Hebdo, has told Radio 4’s Today programme that he “lost him two or three years ago” to radicalism.
Mehdi Bouzid, an imam in the Paris suburb of Aubervilliers, said he had known the younger of the Kouachi brothers and had tried to persuade him not to go abroad to fight.
These quotes are via Press Association:
Cherif was a very good guy but I lost him two or three years ago.
I played football with him. I spoke with him the first time he wanted to go to Iraq, to tell him it is not a solution, you don’t know for whom you are fighting.
It’s very easy in this district to tell some young people ‘You will go to heaven, you will make some beautiful things’, and I think Cherif fell in this trap.
Two weeks ago he was with my father, praying in the 19th district of Paris, and he was always with a smile.
I never suspected he could make this thing. When we saw the pictures I recognised the way he walks in the video, I recognised his voice.
I don’t justify any attacks, but when you look at their past, when you don’t have any identity, when you don’t belong, you can take some very, very ugly act.
When you know that something hurts me, you have to respect me, and Charlie Hebdo don’t respect that.
When you have a Muslim name it is very difficult to find a job, to make your prayer, to wear your veil.
I went to Paris yesterday and I felt the eyes on me with fear and anger and hate. I feel that.
It’s a challenge for France. They have to think about this, because we are here, I was born here, I have my family here, I dream in French, I am French.
I am not alarmist, but maybe in a few weeks, in a few months, we will notice that there will be some bad things in France.
Sky News reports that a million people are expected to join tomorrow’s demonstration in Paris:
Update - one million people are expected to march at a rally in #Paris tomorrow following terror attacks #CharlieHebdo
— Sky News Newsdesk (@SkyNewsBreak) January 10, 2015
As interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve mentioned, France is preparing for a huge march in Paris on Sunday.
As well as France’s own leaders, British prime minister David Cameron, German chancellor Angela Merkel, Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy and Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi are also due to attend, after a meeting with President Hollande at the Elysée Palace.
I've accepted President Hollande's invitation to join the Unity Rally in Paris this Sunday - celebrating the values behind #CharlieHebdo.
— David Cameron (@David_Cameron) January 9, 2015
The rally is expected to start at 3pm on Sunday at the Place de la Republique.
Marine Le Pen, president of the far-right Front National, has criticised what she says is the decision to exclude her and her party from the rally:
En excluant le #FN, le système a réussi à transformer un moment d'union nationale en un symbole de division et de sectarisme piteux. MLP
— Marine Le Pen (@MLP_officiel) January 8, 2015
President François Hollande has met this morning with government and security officials, including the heads of all French police forces, prime minister Manuel Valls, interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve and justice minister Christine Taubira.
Cazeneuve has just been speaking outside the meeting:
Of course we are absolutely determined to carry on and take necessary measures to protect the country.
He said security services continued to hunt for the suspected accomplice, as well as any other individuals who may have been working with the terrorists.
We want to maintain a high level of vigilance.
We are exposed to risks, therefore it’s important that the threat alert which was enhanced across the country stays in place for the next few weeks.
Cazeneuve said extra resources would be mobilised to protect “a number of institutions and areas”. Referring to Sunday’s march in Paris, which will be attended by various European leaders as well as many thousands of individuals who want to show their support for France, he added:
There will be a major demonstration tomorrow.
French people must know all measures have been taken to ensure this demonstration can take place in harmony, respect and of course safety.
For those who want to attend it, they can attend in all safety.
He said he would later give more details of all the measures being put in place to ensure the march passes off safely.
Updated
French prosecutors have revealed that more than 500 phone calls took place between the Kouachi brothers and Coulibaly and Boumeddiene prior to this week’s attacks.
Both Kouachis are reported to have been on UK and US watch-lists.
While Boumeddiene remains at large, 16 other people have been detained for questioning, including, said France’s chief prosecutor François Molins, the wife of one of the Kouachi brothers and other members of their wider family.
AFP files this report on the latest developments:
French forces were Saturday frantically hunting for the partner of an Islamist gunman as the country mourned 17 dead.
After President François Hollande warned the threats facing France “weren’t over” and Islamist groups issued chilling warnings of fresh attacks, authorities pursued Hayat Boumeddiene, said to be “armed and dangerous”.
She is the partner of Amedy Coulibaly, who died on Friday when security forces stormed a Jewish supermarket in eastern Paris where he had taken terrified shoppers hostage.
He killed four hostages during the siege and called friends from the scene urging them to stage further attacks.
Hollande held an emergency meeting of key ministers early Saturday, hours after a dramatic end to twin sieges that also resulted in the death of two brothers who had killed 12 at the offices of the Charlie Hebdo magazine on Wednesday.
As France’s bloodiest week in decades drew to a close, the mood began to turn to one of grim national reflection.
Hollande said he would attend a march of unity in Paris on Sunday expected to draw hundreds of thousands of people as well as the leaders of countries including Germany, Britain, Italy and Spain.
Questions were also mounting over how the three men – brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, and supermarket gunman Coulibaly – had slipped through the security net after it emerged that all three were known to the intelligence agencies.
With fears spreading in the wake of the attack, the United States warned of a global threat, telling its citizens to beware of “terrorist actions and violence” all over the world.
Hollande, meanwhile, described the attack on the supermarket as an “appalling anti-Semitic act” and said: “These fanatics have nothing to do with the Muslim religion.”
The Kouachi brothers were cornered in a printing business in Dammartin-en-Goele outside Paris Friday after a firefight with police that Paris prosecutor François Molins said left Said with a minor neck wound.
The brothers took the manager hostage, later releasing him after he helped Said with his wound, while a second man hid beneath a sink upstairs, said Molins. The second man was able to text security forces information from inside the premises, a source said, and survived the assault unharmed.
The gunmen had a hefty cache of arms including Molotov cocktails and a loaded rocket-launcher.
As French elite forces moved into place around the building, with snipers deployed on roofs and helicopters buzzing overhead, a fresh drama unfolded in eastern Paris with a hail of gunfire around lunchtime.
There, Coulibaly – suspected of gunning down police officer Clarissa Jean-Philippe a day after the Charlie Hebdo massacre – stormed a Jewish supermarket hours before the Sabbath, killing four shoppers and taking others hostage.
Up to five people, including a three-year-old boy, survived hidden inside a refrigerator for five hours, with police pinpointing their location using their mobile phones, prosecutors and relatives said.
In Dammartin-en-Goele, as the sun set shortly after 5pm local time, the two gunmen charged out of the building with guns blazing before being cut down.
Shortly afterwards security forces moved in on the supermarket, where Coulibaly had just knelt to do his evening prayer when the special forces struck.
French TV station BFMTV revealed police were able to exploit a lapse in his defences as he had not hung up his phone after speaking to one of their reporters.
Meanwhile, questions mounted as to how the three men could have slipped through the security net. Links have emerged showing the brothers and Coulibaly were close allies and had worked together. All three had a radical past and were known to French intelligence.
Cherif Kouachi, 32, was a known jihadist who was convicted in 2008 for involvement in a network sending fighters to Iraq. His brother Said, 34, was known to have travelled to Yemen in 2011, where he received weapons training from AQAP (Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula).
It also emerged that the brothers had been on a US terror watch list “for years”.
Cherif told French TV he was acting on behalf of the Yemen-based AQAP, while Coulibaly said he was a member of the Islamic State group (Isis).
Coulibaly, 32 – who met Kouachi in prison – was sentenced to five years in prison in 2013 for his role in a failed bid to break an Algerian Islamist, Smain Ait Ali Belkacem, out of jail.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the carnage they left in their wake showed there had been “clear failings” in intelligence.
The Islamic State group’s radio praised them as “heroes” and Somalia’s Shebab militants, Al-Qaeda’s main affiliate in Africa, hailed their “heroic” act.
A chilling new warning came from AQAP, whose top sharia official Harith al-Nadhari threatened France with fresh attacks, the Site monitoring group said: “It is better for you to stop your aggression against the Muslims, so perhaps you will live safely. If you refuse but to wage war, then wait for the glad tiding.”
Rupert Murdoch has attracted criticism this morning for this tweet, in which he says the world’s Muslims “must be held responsible” for attacks such as those seen in Paris this week:
Maybe most Moslems peaceful, but until they recognize and destroy their growing jihadist cancer they must be held responsible.
— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) January 10, 2015
Big jihadist danger looming everywhere from Philippines to Africa to Europe to US. Political correctness makes for denial and hypocrisy.
— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) January 10, 2015
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This graphic plots the series of events between the storming of the Charlie Hebdo offices and Friday’s bloody denouement.
It is now known that Amedy Coulibaly, suspected of killing police officer Clarissa Jean-Philippe in Montrouge on Thursday, shot and killed four shoppers in the Jewish supermarket before the police action began.
Fifteen hostages were freed.
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Opening summary
Welcome to ongoing coverage of the aftermath of terror attacks in Paris that have left 17 people dead, along with three gunmen.
French police are continuing to hunt Hayat Boumeddiene, the woman named, along with Amedy Coulibaly, as a suspect in the Montrouge shooting of a police officer on Thursday. Boumeddiene, who remains on the run, is reportedly the former girlfriend of Coulibaly – who was killed by police on Friday after he took hostage a number of shoppers in an east Paris kosher supermarket and shot four of them dead.
In a separate but coordinated siege in Dammartin-en-Goële, 25 miles north-east of the French capital, police also shot dead Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, responsible for the cold-blooded killing of 12 people – including two police officers – at the Paris offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday.
Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula has claimed responsibility. On Friday night a member of al-Qaida’s branch in Yemen claimed that the group directed the attack against Charlie Hebdo “as revenge for the honour” of the prophet Muhammad.
In a video statement, Harith al Nadhari said:
It is better for you to stop your aggression against the Muslims, so perhaps you will live safely.
If you refuse but to wage war, then wait for the glad tiding.
Key members of the French government were due to held a security meeting this morning to decide on measures to protect against further such attacks.
We will have live coverage throughout the day of the latest developments.
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