Paris Attacks: France still on alert as carnage comes to end

President Francois Hollande warned that the danger to France, home to the European Union’s biggest communities of both Muslims and Jews, was not over yet.

“These madmen, fanatics, have nothing to do with the Muslim religion,” Hollande said in a televised address. “France has not seen the end of the threats it faces.”

Following heavy loss of life over three days, which began with the attack on Charlie Hebdo when 12 people were shot dead, French authorities are trying to prevent a rise in vengeful anti-immigrant sentiment.

Hollande denounced the killing of the four hostages at the kosher supermarket in the Vincennes district of Paris. “This was an appalling anti-Semitic act that was committed,” he said.

Officials said Cherif Kouachi and his brother Said, both in their 30s, died when security forces raided a print shop in the small town of Dammartin-en-Goele, northeast of Paris, where the chief suspects in Wednesday’s attack had been holed up. The hostage they had taken was safe, an official said.

Gunfire rang out, followed by blasts and then silence as smoke could be seen billowing from the roof of the print shop. Amid thick fog, a helicopter landed on the building’s roof, signalling the end of the assault. A government source said the brothers had emerged from the building and opened fire on police before they were killed.

Before his death, one of the Kouachi brothers told a television station he had received financing from an al-Qaida preacher in Yemen.

“I was sent, me, Cherif Kouachi, by al-Qaida of Yemen. I went over there and it was Anwar al Awlaki who financed me,” he told BFM-TV by phone, according to a recording aired by the channel after the siege was over.

Al Awlaki, an influential international recruiter for al-Qaida, was killed in September 2011 in a drone strike. A senior Yemeni intelligence source earlier told Reuters that Kouachi’s brother Said had also met al Awlaki during a stay in Yemen in 2011.

Minutes after the print shop assault, police broke the second siege at the supermarket in eastern Paris. Four hostages died there along with the gunman, Amedy Coulibaly.

Coulibaly also called BFM-TV before he died to claim allegiance to Islamic State, saying he wanted to defend Palestinians and target Jews. Coulibaly said he had jointly planned the attacks with the Kouachi brothers, and police confirmed they were all members of the same Islamist cell in northern Paris.

Police had already been hunting 32-year-old Coulibaly along with a 26 year-old woman after the killing on Thursday of a policewoman. The woman, Hayat Boumeddiene, remains on the run.

Altogether 17 victims have died along with the three hostage-takers since Wednesday. France plans a rally to protest on Sunday against the attacks. Among those who plan to attend are German Chancellor Angela Merkel, prime ministers David Cameron of Britain, Matteo Renzi of Italy and Mariano Rajoy of Spain, and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker.

President Barack Obama also expressed US support. “I want the people of France to know that the US stands with you today, stands with you tomorrow,” he said.

World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder joined the condemnations, saying “Jewish life in France under threat if terror does not stop”.

‘Mass casualty attacks’ in West planned by al-Qaeda

by Jamie Grierson

A group of core al-Qaeda terrorists in Syria is planning “mass casualty attacks” against the West, the head of MI5 has warned, in a stark reminder that the threat to the UK continues to stretch beyond Islamic State (IS).

As dramatic events surrounding the terrorists in Paris continue to unfold, Andrew Parker, director general of the Security Service, said transport networks and famous landmarks were among Western targets of “complex and ambitious plots” by Syria-based extremists.

Aviation bomb plots and Mumbai-style shootings in crowded places are thought to be among plans being developed by the shadowy group, which has Britain among its sights.

It is also understood the organisation in question is the “Khorasan” cell, which is made up of veteran jihadists sent to Syria by al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Khorasan is embedded within al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch al-Nusra Front, which is known to include radicalised Britons who have travelled to the war-torn country to fight.

Addressing about 70 members of the Royal United Services Institute at MI5 headquarters Thames House yesterday, Mr Parker said: “We still face more complex and ambitious plots that follow the now sadly well-established approach of al-Qaeda and its imitators attempts to cause large scale loss of life, often by attacking transport systems or iconic targets.

“We know, for example, that a group of core al-Qaeda terrorists in Syria is planning mass casualty attacks against the West.”

He added: “Al-Qaeda continues to provide a focus for extremists to plot terrorist attacks against the West.

“British Islamist extremists still travel to south Asia, the Arabian peninsula and other theatres to try to obtain terrorist training.”

Khorasan has been described as a small group made up of about 50 fighters, including expert bomb makers and high-ranking members of al-Qaeda who moved to Pakistan after the 2001 Afghanistan invasion.

US officials said they had been sent to Syria not to fight the government of president Bashar Assad but to “develop external attacks, construct and test improvised explosive devices and recruit westerners to conduct operations”.

In September, US military forces carried out air strikes against Khorasan after intelligence reports suggested the group was in the final stages of plans to launch major attacks against Western targets including the US.

Mr Parker said around 600 extremists are now among many Britons who have travelled to Syria — higher than previous estimates of 500.

The director general said a significant proportion has joined Islamic State, the extremist group that has taken over large swathes of Iraq and Syria and is behind a series of beheadings of hostages in recent months.

“Despite its medieval tactics, Isil is a terrorist phenomenon of the modern age,” he said.

“It makes full use of the modern social media and communications methods through which many of us now live our lives,” he said.

The director general disclosed that in recent months three UK terrorist plots which would have led to deaths have been foiled by MI5 and its intelligence partners at MI6 and GCHQ.

Days of fear: How events unfolded

Wednesday: Two men armed with Kalashnikov rifles storm the Paris offices of the Charlie Hebdo at around 11.30am (1030 Irish time). They kill a maintenance man before shooting eight journalists, a police officer protecting cartoonist Charb, and a visitor.

The attackers then coldly execute an injured police officer sprawled on the pavement.

Following a collision, they abandon their vehicle, hijack another, and flee northwards from Paris.

Anti-terrorist police raid sites in the northeastern towns of Reims and Charleville-Mezieres, acting on forensic evidence and an identity document found in the abandoned car.

Police are hunting three men, including brothers: Cherif and Said Kouachi, 32 and 34 . The third man suspected of helping the brothers then turns himself in.

Thursday: A policewoman is shot by a man just outside Paris and dies.

The suspects in the Charlie Hebdo attack rob a filling station in the northern Aisne region, the owner then calls police.

A US official says the Kouachi brothers have been “on our watch-list for years”.

Friday: Shots are fired during a car chase on the National 2 highway northeast of Paris.

One person is taken hostage at a printing business near Charles de Gaulle airport, and police swarm the industrial park where it is located. Army and police helicopters swoop down on the site.

Radical cleric led duo to terrorism

by Kate Ferguson

The dead brothers believed to have massacred 12 people in Paris were poverty-stricken orphans set on the path to terrorism by a radical preacher.

Cherif Kouachi, 32, was a pizza delivery man and would-be rapper before he was reportedly persuaded by extremist cleric Farid Benyettou to abandon his life and book a flight to wage “holy war” in Syria.

Raised in care homes in Rennes after his French Algerian parents died, he returned to Paris with his brother where, angry at the war in Iraq, he fell under the spell of extremism.

He told a French documentary in 2005 how he became radicalised, explaining that “Farid told me that (holy) texts prove the benefits of suicide attacks.

“It’s written in the texts that it’s good to die as a martyr.”

Soon won over, he became part of an organisation known as “Buttes Chaumont” said to be led by Benyettou. It funnelled Muslim men from the working class 19th arrondissement of Paris to the battlefields of Iraq.

His training sessions consisted of jogging round a Paris park to get in shape and learning how a Kalashnikov automatic rifle works by studying a sketch.

At his subsequent trial in 2008 he was described as a reluctant holy warrior who was relieved when he was stopped by French counter-espionage officials from taking his flight out to the Middle East.

Journalists who covered his court case recall a skinny young man who appeared very nervous to be in court.

And a video filmed in 2004 show a young man who seems a far cry from a terrorist capable of gunning down a dozen people in cold blood.

Lanky, wearing a baseball cap backwards and chunky watch, he belts out rap lyrics and breaks into a dance surrounded by friends.

In the documentary he was described as a “fan of rap music more inclined to hang out with pretty young girls than to attend the mosque”. But all that changed after he met Benyettou. Following his trial he was sentenced to 18 months in prison and jail seems to have hardened his attitude.

French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve, however, warned that Cherif had been described by fellow would-be jihadists as “violently anti-Semitic”.

After he was released from prison he kept a low profile locally and worked in a supermarket’s fish section in the Paris suburbs for six months beginning in 2009.

But he soon came under the attention of the authorities. In 2010, he was arrested as part of an alleged plot to free an Islamic militant sentenced to life for bombing a Paris train line in 1995. Kouachi was ultimately released without charge.

Much less has become public about the older brother, Said, 34, but Mr Cazeneuve said the jobless resident of the city of Reims was known to authorities.