At least 12 people were killed Wednesday in a shooting attack at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris. Around 3,000 police officers are reportedly involved in the search for the assailants behind France’s deadliest terrorist attack in memory.
Hooded, black-clad gunmen burst into the office of a provocative French satirical magazine Wednesday, killing four cartoonists and eight others before heading off onto the streets of Paris.
While it wasn't immediately clear who was behind the late morning attack, French officials viewed it as a blatant act of terrorism. And there were fears things could get worse, with the assailants still on the loose.
"We need to find the actors of this terrorist act," French President Francois Hollande said. "They must be arrested and brought before judges and condemned as quickly as possible. France is shocked today."
In the horrified aftermath as police were still assessing the carnage, French President François Hollande arrived at the scene of the crime and declared the shootings a terrorist act aiming to undermine France’s constitutional right to freedom of speech. “This was an operation by terrorists against a newspaper that has been threatened several times,” he told reporters on the sidewalk, calling the attack “an act of exceptional barbarism.”
“France today received a shock,” he said. “A newspaper means free speech for journalists.”
This would not be the first attack on journalists in Paris. But suspicions quickly pointed to hardline Islamist militant groups, which have singled out the newspaper for years in threats. Conservative Islamists have railed against Charlie Hebdo since at least 2011, when it published a series of cartoons lampooning the Muslim Prophet Mohamed. The publication’s offices were soon after firebombed, in what Muslim groups said was a revenge attack for the cartoons. In November last year, another firebomb was lobbed at the building.
Le Monde reported Wednesday that Stéphane Charbonnier (“Charb”), the Charlie Hebdocartoonist who was on al-Qaeda’s most wanted list in 2013, had been killed. The paper’s editor-in-chief Gerard Biard was reportedly in London at the time of the attack.
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