Police said the gunman who took at least five hostages inside the store in eastern Paris has links to two brothers accused of carrying out a massacre Wednesday at the offices of the weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo. They also blamed the hostage-taker for the murder Thursday of a French policewoman who was gunned down during an unrelated traffic stop on a Paris street, news agencies reported.
The gunman, identified by police as Amedy Coulibaly, 32, threatened to kill hostages in the kosher store if police stormed a commercial building in Dammartin-en-Goele, about 25 miles northeast of Paris, where the armed brothers suspected in the newspaper massacre were reported to be holed up with at least one hostage, the Associated Press reported.
Shortly afterward, an apparent assault began on the hideout of brothers Said and Chérif Kouachi, 34 and 32, and loud explosions were heard from the scene of the grocery store seizure.
There were conflicting reports about whether anyone had been killed at the store. The Agence France-Presse news agency earlier reported that at least two people were killed.
France's
anti-terrorism prosecutor says a shooting and hostage-taking attack is
underway at a kosher market on the eastern edge of Paris. A police
official said there are multiple hostages and wounded at the scene. (AP)
Authorities released photos of the Coulibaly and an alleged female accomplice, but her whereabouts were not immediately clear.
Earlier, investigators identified connections between the slaying of the policewoman and Wednesday’s rampage a satirical newspaper in Paris that left a dozen people dead.
“I have learned with horror of a hostage-taking that has started at Porte de Vincennes and am going there immediately,” Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo wrote on Twitter.
Hayat Boumeddiene, a 26-year-old woman, and Coulibaly are “suspected to be armed and dangerous,” according to the French police, and are being sought in connection with the Thursday killing of the female police officer in Paris. The police said they believe the killing was a “terrorist enterprise.”
Several ambulances were seen rushing toward the grocery store — called Hyper Cacher, or Hyper Kosher — where the hostage-taking took place hours before the Jewish Sabbath started on Friday night, a particularly busy time for a kosher shop.
A police official said several people were wounded when the gunman opened fire in the store Friday afternoon but were able to flee and get medical care, AP reported. It was not immediately clear whether other wounded people remained inside the store.
“Coulibaly has asked that they let the brothers go,” Tirante said. “The demand is to let them leave and I’ll let the hostages go.”
Tirante said that police believe that the attackers all know each other, possibly from time in prison in 2005.
“Kouachi and Coulibaly know each other,” Tirante said. Boumeddiene, who is also wanted in connection with Thursday’s killing of the policewoman, “has disappeared,” Tirante said, and Coulibaly is now alone at the grocery store. French media identified Boumeddiene as Coulibaly’s wife.
At the kosher store, “there may be two deaths, it’s not clear,” Tirante said. The French Interior Ministry denied earlier Friday that anyone had been killed at the store.
Earlier Friday, riot police set up positions near the grocery in the Porte de Vincennes neighborhood on the eastern outskirts of Paris as helicopters flew overhead.
Outside the capital, thousands of police cornered the two suspects in Wednesday’s attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo.
Like the two suspects in the Charlie Hebdo attack, Coulibaly appears to have been well-known to French authorities for years before Thursday’s killing of the policewoman on a quiet Paris street.
Starting in 2001, Coulibaly was repeatedly held for crimes ranging from theft to drug trafficking, according to French media reports. In 2013, he was convicted of involvement in an attempt to help another militant Islamist, Smain Ait Ali Belkacem, escape from prison, Paris newspapers reported. Coulibaly was later released.
Blocks from the grocery store siege, Jewish and Muslim residents of the low-slung, middle-class neighborhood of Porte de Vincennes stood anxiously together behind police lines, awaiting news.
Two women who worked at the store sobbed as they frantically dialed the numbers of friends. They had been off work when the gunman entered. One said she received a call from a colleague who could only get out the words “people are shooting” before the line was cut. She has not been able to reach him since.
“It’s normal grocery store — everyone goes there,” said the woman, who declined to give her name.
“It’s a kosher store, but not only Jews go there. I go there,” said Malik Zadi, a 25-year-old Muslim of Algerian heritage. “In this neighborhood, there are Muslims, Jews, Christians. It’s like Paris. It’s a melting pot. Cohabitation.”
Sam Cohen, a 22-year-old Jewish resident who is also of Algerian heritage, said members of the community get along well together — regardless of faith.
But he said he worried that the attacks of the past three days have unleashed a wave of violence with no end.
“This is only the beginning for what’s awaiting France,” said Cohen, who wore a black hoodie and a black kippah. “Everyone’s going to grab a weapon, and there will be more and more dead every day.”
The attacker struck as residents did their regular Friday shopping ahead of sundown and the start of the Jewish sabbath.
The hostages were believed to be a combination of customers and store employees.
“They were only targeted because they were Jewish,” said one of the women who works at the shop. “They’re just normal people trying to do their jobs.”
As the siege extended late into the afternoon, an eery quiet descended on the normally bustling neighborhood, filled with cafés and grand old 19th century apartment buildings.
Parents shuttled kids home from school through streets swarming with helmeted police brandishing assault rifles. The subway station was shuttered, and all traffic was diverted far from the scene.
Our full coverage of France shooting:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/paris-kosher-market-seized-in-second-hostage-drama-in-nervous-france/2015/01/09/f171b97e-97ff-11e4-8005-1924ede3e54a_story.html?tid=sm_fb
French security forces are closing in on two brothers suspected of carrying out a terror attack at the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper in Paris on Wednesday. Since then, a massive manhunt has been underway for Cherif Kouachi, 32, and his brother Said, 34.
On Friday, thousands of security forces were engaged in a stand off with the suspects in Dammartin-en-Goele, about 25 miles northeast of Paris. We’ll have updates on this unfolding situation here.
There are numerous reports of smoke and gunshots at the site of the hostage standoff in Dammartin-en-Goele, about 25 miles northeast of Paris.
Earlier, police said they believed two suspects in the mass shootings at Charlie Hebdo’s headquarters in Paris had taken at least one hostage in the town’s industrial zone.
The smoke was visible on several live feeds of the scene.
There were about 30 seconds of sustained blasts and gunfire, Witte reports — then nothing.
Police vehicles lined the streets of the neighborhood.
The gunman was connected to the fatal shooting of a Paris policewoman on Thursday, which police linked to Wednesday’s rampage at a newspaper in Paris.
Like the two suspects in the Charlie Hebdo attack, Coulibaly appears
to have been well-known to French authorities for years before
Thursday’s killing of a police officer on a quiet Paris street.
Starting in 2001, Coulibaly was repeatedly held for crimes ranging from theft to drug trafficking, according to French media reports.
In 2013, he was sentenced to five years in prison for involvement in an attempt to help another militant Islamist, Smain Ait Ali Belkacem, escape from prison, according to the Journal du Dimanche, according to the Liberation newspaper.
Le Monde reports that Coulibaly met with former President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2009, a meeting that was written about in a French newspaper at the time.
The acquaintance, who told Le Monde that he or she wished to remain anonymous for security reasons, said that Coulibaly had “slipped progressively from petty to large criminality and then toward Islamism. In total, he has spend a large part of his life in prison.”
Le Monde reported that Coulibaly spoke to the acquaintance in his hometown of Grande Borne à Grigny last weekend and they spoke of seeing each other again. The newspaper said that Coulibaly did not carry a cell phone because he did not want his location tracked.
The hostages were believed to be a combination of customers and store employees.
“They were only targeted because they were Jewish,” said one of the women who works at the shop. “They ‘re just normal people trying to do their jobs.”
As the siege extended late into the afternoon, an eery quiet descended on the normally bustling neighborhood, filled with cafés and grand old 19th century apartment buildings.
Parents shuttled kids home from school through streets swarming with helmeted police brandishing assault rifles. The subway station was shuttered, and all traffic was diverted far from the scene.
“No information!” said a mother waiting for her 13-year-old son. “How can they do this?”
Graphic designer Fabrice Khellafi had just dropped his 3-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son off at a school across from the siege site when he heard helicopters buzzing overhead. He raced back to the school to find police blocking the entrance.
He and his wife, Alexandra Dunoye, rushed to the town gymnasium, where they spent five hours waiting outside for their children inside.
“I am scared,” Dunoye said. “People are scared for their families.”
Pointing to the quaint village streets now teeming with police, she said: “This kind of thing is not supposed to happen here.”
The video above shows the enormous police presence now in the town of about 8,000 people.
Although there’s very little confirmed information available on the hostage situation at the market, French police now believe that the a gunman involved at the market standoff is linked to the shooting of a policewoman on Thursday.
Police Friday identified two suspects in the killing of a policewoman in a Paris suburb on Thursday. They now say that a gunman who took hostages at a Kosher market in the city Friday is linked to that shooting. My colleagues Anthony Faiola, Griff Witte and Daniela Deane have more:
As the manhunt for suspects continued in Paris, French national security forces were stationed at several sites Thursday, including the Eiffel Tower, as seen in the video above.
The patrols followed an alert from France’s Vigipirate national security program.
Two women who worked at the store sobbed as they frantically dialled the numbers of friends. They had been off work when the gunman entered. One said she received a call from a colleague who could only get out the words “people are shooting” before the line cut. She had not been able to reach him since.
“It’s normal grocery store — everyone goes there,” said the woman, who declined to give her name.
“It’s a kosher store, but not only Jews go there. I go there,” said Malik Zadi, a 25-year-old Muslim of Algerian heritage. “In this neighborhood, there are Muslims, Jews, Christians. It’s like Paris. It’s a melting pot. Cohabitation.”
Sam Cohen, a 22-year-old Jewish resident who’s also of Algerian heritage, said members of the community get along well together — regardless of faith.
But he said he worried the attacks of the past three days have unleashed a wave of violence with no end.
“This is only the beginning for what’s awaiting France,” said Cohen, who wore a black hoodie and a black kippah. “Everyone’s going to grab a weapon, and there will be more and more dead every day.”
Rue des Rosiers is in the old Jewish quarter of Paris, not the neighborhood where a hostage situation unfolded on Friday in a kosher grocery store.
One Instagram user showed the prevalence of police on the streets of Paris:
And another showed cops huddling near the Porte de Vincennes metro stop.
Police vehicles lined the streets:
Inside Dammartin-en-Goele, massive convoys of police blockaded access roads to the printing plant where the two suspects were holed up. The sudden siege shocked residents in this tranquil town of 8,400 situated not far from Charles de Gaulle Airport and 26 miles north of Paris.
The standoff was taking place in the town’s industrial zone, peppered with warehouses and cement block apartment buildings. Stunned onlookers watched as police columns sealed off the area.
‘No one is safe,’ said Kamel, a 46 year old airport worker and nearby resident who declined to give his last name. ‘You don’t know what is going to happen next.’
Anthony Faiola reporting from France.
Second hostage crisis is in a Paris kosher market: The AFP has reported that two people have been killed, and according to the Associated Press, multiple people were taken into captivity. It is not immediately clear if this second hostage situation is linked to the shootings at the newspaper Charlie Hebdo.
They are Hayat Boumeddiene, 26, and Amedy Coulibaly, 32:
The latest confrontation with French security forces comes after several reports that the two men suspected of carrying out the fatal attack on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday in Paris were spotted in other parts of France this week.
French police have put the area under lockdown, asking people to not leave their homes and to stay indoors.
According to AFP, at least two people are dead.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews-live/liveblog/french-police-surround-suspects-wanted-in-paris-terror-attack/?tid=sm_fb
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Live Updates: French police surround suspects wanted in Paris terror attack
Special
operations forces arrive at the scene of a hostage situation in
Dammartin-en-Goele on Friday. (Christian Hartmann/Reuters)
On Friday, thousands of security forces were engaged in a stand off with the suspects in Dammartin-en-Goele, about 25 miles northeast of Paris. We’ll have updates on this unfolding situation here.
Smoke, gunshots reported at site of standoff outside Paris
Smoke rises from a building in Dammartin-en-Goele. (Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images)
Earlier, police said they believed two suspects in the mass shootings at Charlie Hebdo’s headquarters in Paris had taken at least one hostage in the town’s industrial zone.
The smoke was visible on several live feeds of the scene.
Gunfire, explosions reported at Kosher shop in Paris
Gunfire and explosions could be heard outside of a Kosher shop in Paris, The Washington Post’s Griff Witte reports from the scene. At the same time, explosions and gunfire were heard at the site of the second hostage situation in Dammartin-en-Goele, 25 miles north of Paris.There were about 30 seconds of sustained blasts and gunfire, Witte reports — then nothing.
Videos: Crisis engulfs streets of Paris
A middle-class neighborhood in eastern Paris was swarmed by security forces as an armed gunman was reportedly holding people hostage in a kosher grocery store.Police vehicles lined the streets of the neighborhood.
The gunman was connected to the fatal shooting of a Paris policewoman on Thursday, which police linked to Wednesday’s rampage at a newspaper in Paris.
Kosher market gunman had long criminal record
Amedy Coulibaly, 32, is one of two suspects police named in connection to Thursday’s fatal shooting of a policewoman in a Paris suburb. And police have also identified him as a gunman holding hostages in a Paris Kosher market on Friday, according to the Associated Press.
(Amedy Coulibaly)
Starting in 2001, Coulibaly was repeatedly held for crimes ranging from theft to drug trafficking, according to French media reports.
In 2013, he was sentenced to five years in prison for involvement in an attempt to help another militant Islamist, Smain Ait Ali Belkacem, escape from prison, according to the Journal du Dimanche, according to the Liberation newspaper.
Le Monde reports that Coulibaly met with former President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2009, a meeting that was written about in a French newspaper at the time.
Report: Suspect didn't carry cell phone
The French newspaper Le Monde spoke to an acquaintance of Amedy Coulibaly, one of two suspects in the fatal shooting of a policewoman in France on Thursday. Police have said that the gunman who took hostages at a supermarket on Friday is linked to the shooting in which Coulibaly is a suspect.The acquaintance, who told Le Monde that he or she wished to remain anonymous for security reasons, said that Coulibaly had “slipped progressively from petty to large criminality and then toward Islamism. In total, he has spend a large part of his life in prison.”
Le Monde reported that Coulibaly spoke to the acquaintance in his hometown of Grande Borne à Grigny last weekend and they spoke of seeing each other again. The newspaper said that Coulibaly did not carry a cell phone because he did not want his location tracked.
Eerie quiet descends on Parisian neighborhood
PARIS — The attacker struck as residents did their regular Friday shopping ahead of sundown and the start of the Jewish sabbath.The hostages were believed to be a combination of customers and store employees.
“They were only targeted because they were Jewish,” said one of the women who works at the shop. “They ‘re just normal people trying to do their jobs.”
As the siege extended late into the afternoon, an eery quiet descended on the normally bustling neighborhood, filled with cafés and grand old 19th century apartment buildings.
Parents shuttled kids home from school through streets swarming with helmeted police brandishing assault rifles. The subway station was shuttered, and all traffic was diverted far from the scene.
'People are scared for their families'
DAMMARTIN-EN-GOELE, France — Police sealed off then evacuated schools within at least a 2 mile radius of the hostage site, leaving hundreds of worried parents waiting to be reunited with their children. Police initially refused to allow parents access to their children, busing them to a town gymnasium where psychologists were on hand to speak with arriving students.“No information!” said a mother waiting for her 13-year-old son. “How can they do this?”
Graphic designer Fabrice Khellafi had just dropped his 3-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son off at a school across from the siege site when he heard helicopters buzzing overhead. He raced back to the school to find police blocking the entrance.
He and his wife, Alexandra Dunoye, rushed to the town gymnasium, where they spent five hours waiting outside for their children inside.
“I am scared,” Dunoye said. “People are scared for their families.”
Pointing to the quaint village streets now teeming with police, she said: “This kind of thing is not supposed to happen here.”
Video: Police descend on town outside Paris
Police believe that two suspects in the Charlie Hebdo mass shooting are holed up in a printing plant in Dammartin-en-Goele, a small town about 25 miles outside of Paris. Police have sealed off access to the plant, where the suspects have at least one hostage.The video above shows the enormous police presence now in the town of about 8,000 people.
Video: the scene outside of Paris hostage drama
This video from the Associated Press captures the scene outside of a Kosher market in Paris on Friday, where a gunman has taken hostages.Although there’s very little confirmed information available on the hostage situation at the market, French police now believe that the a gunman involved at the market standoff is linked to the shooting of a policewoman on Thursday.
Map: Where the hostage situations are taking place
One standoff is unfolding at a Paris kosher grocery store in the Vincennes neighborhood. The other is in a town 25 miles northeast of Paris. As of now, it is unknown if the hostage situations are linked.Gunman in Kosher market hostage situation linked to policewoman shooting
There’s still very little information about the dramatic situation unfolding in Paris and about 25 miles northeast of the city Friday, but some connections between the two cases are beginning to emerge.Police Friday identified two suspects in the killing of a policewoman in a Paris suburb on Thursday. They now say that a gunman who took hostages at a Kosher market in the city Friday is linked to that shooting. My colleagues Anthony Faiola, Griff Witte and Daniela Deane have more:
A possible 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 and Wednesday’s rampage a satirical newspaper in Paris that left a dozen people dead, news reports said.
Video: French forces patrol the Eiffel Tower
As the manhunt for suspects continued in Paris, French national security forces were stationed at several sites Thursday, including the Eiffel Tower, as seen in the video above.
The patrols followed an alert from France’s Vigipirate national security program.
Blocks from kosher grocery store, people anxiously await news
PARIS — Blocks from the grocery store siege, Jewish and Muslim residents of the low-slung, middle class neighborhood of Vincennes stood anxiously together behind police lines, awaiting news.Two women who worked at the store sobbed as they frantically dialled the numbers of friends. They had been off work when the gunman entered. One said she received a call from a colleague who could only get out the words “people are shooting” before the line cut. She had not been able to reach him since.
“It’s normal grocery store — everyone goes there,” said the woman, who declined to give her name.
“It’s a kosher store, but not only Jews go there. I go there,” said Malik Zadi, a 25-year-old Muslim of Algerian heritage. “In this neighborhood, there are Muslims, Jews, Christians. It’s like Paris. It’s a melting pot. Cohabitation.”
Sam Cohen, a 22-year-old Jewish resident who’s also of Algerian heritage, said members of the community get along well together — regardless of faith.
But he said he worried the attacks of the past three days have unleashed a wave of violence with no end.
“This is only the beginning for what’s awaiting France,” said Cohen, who wore a black hoodie and a black kippah. “Everyone’s going to grab a weapon, and there will be more and more dead every day.”
Police ask shops in Paris's Jewish quarter to close early 'as a precaution'
“As a precaution the Mayor & Police Commissioner have asked for the immediate closure of all businesses on the Rue des Rosiers,” the tweet from the mayor of Paris’s 4th administrative district said.Rue des Rosiers is in the old Jewish quarter of Paris, not the neighborhood where a hostage situation unfolded on Friday in a kosher grocery store.
In some parts of Paris, 'guns everywhere'
Police have surrounded a grocery store in Paris, where at least two people were killed in a hostage standoff. According to media reports, multiple hostages are being held captive.One Instagram user showed the prevalence of police on the streets of Paris:
And another showed cops huddling near the Porte de Vincennes metro stop.
Police vehicles lined the streets:
'No one is safe': Terror standoff rocks a tranquil town
Inside Dammartin-en-Goele, massive convoys of police blockaded access roads to the printing plant where the two suspects were holed up. The sudden siege shocked residents in this tranquil town of 8,400 situated not far from Charles de Gaulle Airport and 26 miles north of Paris.
The standoff was taking place in the town’s industrial zone, peppered with warehouses and cement block apartment buildings. Stunned onlookers watched as police columns sealed off the area.
‘No one is safe,’ said Kamel, a 46 year old airport worker and nearby resident who declined to give his last name. ‘You don’t know what is going to happen next.’
Anthony Faiola reporting from France.
Yes, there are two hostage situations underway in France right now
One standoff is in Dammartin-en-Goele: The two brothers suspected of killing 12 people at the Paris office of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday are said to be in a commercial building in a town about 25 miles northeast of Paris. The pair has at least one hostage in custody.Second hostage crisis is in a Paris kosher market: The AFP has reported that two people have been killed, and according to the Associated Press, multiple people were taken into captivity. It is not immediately clear if this second hostage situation is linked to the shootings at the newspaper Charlie Hebdo.
Emergency services workers arrive at a hostage-taking situation at a kosher market in Paris. (AP Photo/Francois Mori)
Photos of two suspects in the killing of a policewoman
French police have released the photos of two individuals wanted in the fatal shooting of a police officer in a southern Paris suburb on Thursday. Earlier, police said they believe these two individuals are “connected” to the two brothers wanted in the attack at the Paris office of the Charlie Hebdo newspaper.They are Hayat Boumeddiene, 26, and Amedy Coulibaly, 32:
Map: Where is Dammartin-en-Goele?
There are reports of two hostage situations unfolding in Dammartin-en-Goële, which is about 25 miles northeast of Paris.The latest confrontation with French security forces comes after several reports that the two men suspected of carrying out the fatal attack on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday in Paris were spotted in other parts of France this week.
Town outside Paris under lockdown as police forces engage in a standoff
Thousands of security forces have surrounded a commercial building in Dammartin-en-Goele, about 25 miles northeast of Paris.French police have put the area under lockdown, asking people to not leave their homes and to stay indoors.
Second standoff underway in Paris supermarket
As thousands of security forces encircle a building outside Paris, a second hostage crisis is underway at a Paris kosher supermarket.According to AFP, at least two people are dead.
#BREAKING At least two killed in hostage drama east of Paris: source
— Agence France-Presse (@AFP) January 9, 2015
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