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Report by the New-York Times:
Report by the New-York Times:
Terror Attack on Charlie Hebdo Newspaper in Paris Kills 12
PARIS — Masked gunmen with automatic weapons opened fire in the offices of a French satirical newspaper on Wednesday in Paris, the police said, killing 12 people and then escaping in a car.
President François Hollande said the attack on the weekly, Charlie Hebdo, was “without a doubt” an act of terrorism and raised the nationwide terror alert to its highest status. He said that several terrorist attacks had been thwarted in recent weeks.
The gunmen were still at large hours after the shooting. The French authorities added additional security at houses of worship, news media offices and transportation centers. Some schools were on lockdown and an extensive manhunt for the gunmen was being carried out across Paris.
A senior French prosecutor said the victims included two police officers, including one assigned to guard the newspaper’s offices and its top editor. The second officer was shot and killed as he lay on the ground, the police said.
The radio station France Info quoted a witness as saying that he saw the episode from a nearby building in the heart of the French capital, not far from the Place des Vosges.
“About a half an hour ago, two black-hooded men entered the building with Kalashnikovs,” the witness, Benoît Bringer, told the station.
“A few minutes later, we heard lots of shots,” he said, adding that the men were then seen fleeing the building.
Xavier Castaing, a police spokesman, said that three armed men, wearing masks, had forced their way into the offices and fired indiscriminately at people in the lobby, hitting many. He said that they were carrying AK-47 weapons, and that the attack had lasted several minutes before the attackers fled by car.
News reports said the attackers shot at the police outside the building before escaping. During the attack, several journalists sought cover on the roof.
In 2011, the office of the weekly was badly damaged by a firebomb after it published a spoof issue “guest edited” by the Prophet Muhammad to salute the victory of an Islamist party in Tunisian elections. It had announced plans to publish a special issue renamed “Charia Hebdo,” a play on the word in French for Shariah law.
A lawyer for the newspaper said that a number of prominent editors and cartoonists had been killed on Wednesday, including the cartoonists Stéphane Charbonnier, known as “Charb,” and Jean Cabut, who signs his work “Cabu.” He said that the cartoonists Georges Wolinski and Bernard Verlhac were also among the victims.
The police said that they had discovered an abandoned car used by the gunmen in the 20th Arrondissement of Paris.
One journalist at the scene, who asked that her name not be used, texted a friend after the shooting: “I’m alive. There is death all around me. Yes, I am there. The jihadists spared me.”
Clockwise from top left, the cartoonists Jean Cabut, known as Cabu; Bernard Verlhac, who drew under the name Tingous; Georges Wolinski; and Stéphane Charbonnier, better known as Charb.
The cabinet was set to meet in an emergency session at 2 p.m., officials said.
A senior United States counterterrorism official said on Wednesday that the American authorities were following the developments in Paris closely, but that they had not yet identified any individuals or groups who might be responsible for the attack.
The United States official noted that, according to social media reports, the attackers did refer to the Prophet Muhammad, saying he was “avenged.”
President Obama, in a statement, condemned the attack.
In a condolence letter addressed to Mr. Hollande, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany expressed condolences, saying, “In this difficult hour, we stand close at the side of our French friends.”
“This horrible act is not only an attack on the lives of French citizens and the domestic security of France,” Ms. Merkel said. “It also stands as an attack on the freedom of expression and the press, a core element of our free, democratic culture that can in no way be justified.”
The cover of the newspaper on Wednesday featured a caricature of Michel Houellebecq, a controversial novelist whose sixth novel, “Submission,” predicts a future France run by Muslims, in which women forsake Western dress and polygamy is introduced. On the cover, Mr. Houellebecq is depicted as a wizard and smoking a cigarette. “In 2022, I will do Ramadan,” he is shown saying.
The book’s publication, ahead of presidential elections in 2017, comes as the increasingly influential far-right National Front has helped spur a loud and often acrimonious debate about immigration. The attack comes as nearly 1,000 French citizens have gone or planned to join jihadist groups in Iraq and Syria last year, further fueling concerns about radical Islam encroaching into France.
Last month, Prime Minister Manuel Valls ordered hundreds of additional military personnel onto the streets to reinforce a routine deployment of security forces after a string of attacks across France raised alarm about Islamic militancy.
In Dijon and Nantes, a total of 23 people were wounded when men drove vehicles into crowds, with one of the drivers shouting an Islamic rallying cry. The authorities depicted both drivers as mentally unstable.
The attacks stoked concerns that militants were ramping up attacks against French citizens in retaliation for the French government’s support for the United States-led air campaign against Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq. The attacks came after violence attributed to lone-wolf attackers in London in 2013, in Canada in October, and in Sydney, Australia, last month.
Charlie Hebdo is part of a venerable tradition in France, deploying satire and insolence to take on politicians and the police, bankers and religions of all kinds, including this week a mock debate about whether Jesus existed or not.
The weekly was born in controversy in 1970 with the ban of a publication called Hara-Kiri after it mocked the death of former President Charles de Gaulle. That prompted its journalists to set up a new weekly, Charlie Hebdo, a reference to its reprint of Charlie Brown cartoons from the United States.
The publication, which has a weekly circulation of about 30,000, suffered through periods in the 1980s when it ceased publication. Like other frail journals in the French newspaper industry, it recently issued appeals to its readers for financial aid with a declaration on its site, “Charlie Is in Danger.”
Michael J. Morell, the former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency and now a consultant to CBS News, said it was unclear whether the attackers were acting on their own or directed by organized groups.
“This is the worst terrorist attack in Europe since the attacks in London in July of 2005,” Mr. Morell said. “The motive here is absolutely clear: trying to shut down a media organization that lampooned the Prophet Muhammad. So, no doubt in my mind that this is terrorism.”
He added, “What we have to figure out here is the perpetrators and whether they were self-radicalized or whether they were individuals who fought in Syria and Iraq and came back, or whether they were actually directed by ISIS or Al Qaeda.”
