French officials: Hostage-takers killed at

twin standoffs

Object 1

Gunshots were heard at printing plant northeast of Paris where two brothers
suspected of killing 12 people in an Islamist attack on French satirical
newspaper Charlie Hebdo held one person hostage. (AP)
By Anthony Faiola, Griff Witte and Brian Murphy January 9 at 3:05 PM
DAMMARTIN-EN-GOELE, France Security forces launched coordinated assaults at
twin hostage standoffs Friday, freeing most captives and killing three gunmen,
including brothers suspected in Frances worst terrorist attack in generations.
The raids which also left at least four hostages dead capped days of bloodshed and
tensions that put the country on its highest security footing and exposed apparent
connections between the attackers and al-Qaedas branch in Yemen.
There also were loose ends, including at least one associated suspect at large and
ongoing probes into whether they were part of a wider network in France.
At sundown, the police moved in. Gunfire and explosions rocked the two sites: A
kosher market in Paris where a gunman held hostages, and an industrial park
northeast of Paris where a lone hostage was held by two brothers wanted for
Wednesdays rampage at a satirical newspaper that left a dozen people dead.

The brothers came out firing their guns before being killed, police said. The hostagetaker at the market appeared to offer the captives as bargaining chips to try to find an
escape route for the cornered brothers.
Frances ambassador to the United States, Gerard Araud, posted Twitter messages that
all three of the suspects had been killed and hostages were safe.
Police said a total of 16 hostages were freed: one at the printing facility outside Paris
and the rest from the kosher market.
In an address to the nation, French President Francois Hollande said four hostages
were killed at the market.
[Live blog: Latest updates on the shooting suspects and the ongoing hostage
situation]
As the hostage dramas unfolded, an apparent matrix took shape as police identified the
gunman who seized the market as linked to the fatal shooting of a Paris policewoman
on Thursday.
Earlier, investigators identified connections between the police slaying andthe
massacre at a newspaper in Paris, Charlie Hebdo, whose provocative images and
content on Islam had brought threats and reprisals over the years, including a
firebombing in 2011.
The death toll Wednesday included the editor and other noted staff members.
French authorities in standoff with Paris attack suspects

View Photos
Thousands of security forces, including negotiators, surround a commercial building
northeast of Paris.
In his speech, Hollande praised security forces for the tandem operations and vowed to
respond with force against terrorism.
France is not finished with these threats, he said.
In Dammartin-en-Goele, about 25 miles northeast of Paris, thousands of antiterrorism forces had massed after days of intense searches in villages and woodlands
outside the French capital, following sightings of the suspects: Cherif Kouachi, 32, and
his brother Said, 34.
French authorities say the brothers exchanged fire with police before abandoning a
stolen car and taking refuge inside the printing company, which apparently was
selected at random. They took at least one hostage, but police gave no further details.

In scenes reminiscent of other recent terror-related standoffs including last months

hostage-taking at a Sydney cafe French police put the area under lockdown orders,
asking people to stay indoors and turn off their lights as the drama played out on an
overcast and drizzly afternoon.
[Read: Shooting suspects tried to meet with al-Qaeda]
In separate developments, other links began to emerge.
First, police reported an apparent connection between the newspaper attack and the
two suspects in the slaying of the policewoman in a southern Paris suburb.
Then on Friday, one of the police shooting suspects, 32-year-old Amedy Coulibaly, was
identified by police as the hostage-taker at the kosher market in Porte de Vincennes on
the eastern edge of Paris.
A police official at the scene told the AP that Coulibaly had threatened to kill the
captives if police launched an assault against the brothers. The official, who was not
authorized to speak publicly, described the twin events as clearly linked.
In 2013, Coulibaly was sentenced to five years in prison for involvement in an attempt
to help a militant Islamist, Smain Ait Ali Belkacem, escape from prison. Coulibaly was
released early.
He previous served time in prison for crimes including armed robbery. Coulibaly later
took a job at a Coca-Cola plant outside Paris and, in 2009, passed high-level security
clearance for a meeting with then President Nicolas Sarkozy to discuss youth
employment programs.
Even as French officials weighed whether to lower the security threat levels around the
country, they grappled with questions.

Coulibalys suspected accomplice in the police shooting a woman identified as Hayet

Boumddiene remained on the run. It was not immediately clear if she took part in
the market hostage-taking and managed to slipped away.
Intelligence experts also have begun to piece together apparent ties between the
brothers and al-Qaeda-linked militants in Yemen. In 2013, the Yemen-based group
published a notice called Wanted Dead or Alive for Crimes Against Islam featuring
the late Stephane Charbonnier, the editor of Charlie Hebdo.
Frances interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said security forces remain
mobilized.
Riot police circle Paris kosher grocery store in second siege

View Photos
Security forces moved in on a market in Porte de Vincennes on the eastern outskirts of
Paris.
Full details from the raid on the printing plant were not immediately know.

Yves Albarello, a lawmaker who said he was inside the police command post, told the
station i-Tele that it appeared the brothers the Paris-born sons of Algerian
immigrants want to die as martyrs.
In an apparent brush with the fugitives, a businessman who had an appointment at the
printing company said he shook hands with one of the armed suspects, believing he
was a police special forces officer, France Info radio reported.

The man, identified only as Didier, said the owner of the business was accompanied by
an armed man clad in black and wearing a bulletproof vest. Didier said he believed the

man at first was a police commando.

We all shook hands and my client told me to leave, Didier added.
The armed man then added: Go, we dont kill civilians, Didier recalled.
As I left, I didnt know what it was. It wasnt normal, Didier said in the radio
interview. I did not know what was going on. Was it a hostage taking or a burglary?
Stunned onlookers watched as police columns sealed off the towns industrial zone,
dotted with warehouses and cement block apartment buildings.
No one is safe, said Kamel, a 46-year-old airport worker and nearby resident who
declined to give his last name. You dont know what is going to happen next.
Fresh details emerged Thursday that one of the brothers had tried to meet with alQaedas affiliate in Yemen.
U.S. officials said the older of the two, Said Kouachi, is believed to have traveled to
Yemen in 2011 in an effort to link up with al-Qaedas affiliatethere at a time when that
group was eclipsing the terror networks core leadership in Pakistan as the principal
threat to the United States.
U.S. officials said Kouachi may have received small-arms training and picked up other
skills while in Yemen, but they described the years that followed that 2011 visit as a
kind of hole in the timeline, with significant gaps in authorities understanding of the
brothers activities and whereabouts.
Those blank spots have led U.S. and other officials to seek to determine whether one or
both brothers traveled to Syria or another conflict zone, or whether they managed to
lower their profile in France to such a degree that scrutiny of them subsided.

In Yemen, a security official told the AP that Said Kouachi is suspected of having
fought for al-Qeada in the country. The official spoke on condition of anonymity
because of an ongoing investigation into the brothers.
As the manhunt widened in recent days, French officials announced that they had
taken nine people into custody in relation to the case. Authorities would not release
their names, but French media said that those picked up in the dragnet included a
sister of the men as well as her companion and the wife of Said Kouachi.
We will show these terrorists through the firm defense of the values of the republic
that we are not afraid and that we remain united, said Cazeneuve, the interior
minister.
Thousands poured into Pariss Place de la Republique on Thursday for a second night
to honor the dead including some of Frances best-known cartoonists at a
publication that had lampooned Islam along with other targets.
Many spoke of unity, with the Eiffel Tower shrouded in black Thursday evening, its
lights doused in honor of the fallen. The slogan Je suis Charlie I am Charlie
became ubiquitous in offices, on sidewalks and in public squares nationwide.
And in a nation that is home to Western Europes largest Muslim population as well as
the continents strongest anti-immigrant and extreme far-right movements, there were
also fears of rising religious and political tensions in the aftermath of the attack.

Object 2

The attack on the offices of satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo is the deadliest
in recent history. Here are some of the major terror attacks in France in the last two
decades. (Davin Coburn and Jorge Ribas/The Washington Post)
On Thursday, a man was arrested in the city of Poitiers after painting the words Death
to Arabs on the gates of a mosque. In the city of Caromb, a car belonging to a Muslim
family was shot at. In two other French cities, small explosives went off near mosques.
No injuries were reported in any of the incidents, but they immediately ignited
concerns about further ideological clashes, violent or otherwise.
Marine Le Pen, the head of the far-right National Front, spoke out Thursday, calling
her party the only one that had challenged the notion of Islamic fundamentalism on
our territory.
But many in France said that the far right would not succeed in leveraging the attack
for its own purposes, saying the nation was pulling together in tragedy, not being
drawn apart.
In the last 24 hours, what I have seen is a sense of national responsibility, a sense of
unity, said Jean-Charles Brisard, a Paris-based terrorism and security expert. We
know they want to use this to tear us apart, to create division. But France will not allow

that.
Witte reported from Paris and and Murphy from Washington. Michael Birnbaum in
Paris, Daniela Deane in London and Greg Miller in Washington contributed to this
report.
Our full coverage of France shooting:
- Live blog: Latest updates from two standoffs
- Hostake taking said to be linked to shooting of a policewoman
- Shooting suspects tried to meet with al-Qaeda
- Map: Tracking the manhunt for the shooters

Anthony Faiola is The Post's Berlin bureau chief. Faiola

joined the Post in 1994, since then reporting for the paper from six
continents and serving as bureau chief in Tokyo, Buenos Aires, New York
and London.

Griff Witte is The Posts London bureau chief. He

previously served as the papers deputy foreign editor and as the bureau
chief in Kabul, Islamabad and Jerusalem.

Brian Murphy joined the Post after more than 20 years as a foreign
correspondent and bureau chief for the Associated Press in Europe and the
Middle East. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has written
three books.

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