Up to 11 people were killed and five left critically wounded today when armed gunmen carried out a ‘massacre’ at the offices of a notoriously anti-Islamic satirical magazine in Paris.
Two masked men brandishing Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenades burst into the Charlie Hebdo headquarters, opening fire on staff. By midday, there were reports of up to 11 people dead and 10 wounded, five critically, including journalists, administrative staff, and police officers who attended the scene.
Pierre de Cossette, a broadcast journalist with Europe1 News, said: “Several men in black cagoules were heard shouting “the Prophet has been avenged”.
Officers were involved in a gunfight with the men, who escaped in a hijacked car and sped away from the 15th arrondissement office, towards east Paris. As well as the AK47 assault rifles, there were also reports of a rocket propelled grenade being used.
When shots rang out, it is thought that three policemen on bicycles were the first to respond.
“There was a loud gunfire and at least one explosion,” said a witness. “When police arrived there was a mass shoot-out. The men got away by a stolen car.”
A police official, Luc Poignant, said he was aware of one journalist dead and several injured, including three police officers. “it’s carnage,” Poignant told BFM TV. There were reports that the gunmen were looking for people by name.
The latest tweet published by the magazine’s official Twitter account featured a cartoon of Abu Baghdadi, the leader of Islamic State. After the shooting, hundreds of comments were posted on the Charlie Hebdo Twitter page, with one user, David Rault, writing: “A sad day for freedom of expression.”
President Hollande was on the scene today, saying the worst terrorist atrocity in recent years this century was an unjustifiable attack on press freedom.
The offices of the same magazine were burnt down in a petrol attack in 2014 after running a magazine cover of the Prophet Mohammed as a cartoon character. At the time, the editor-in-chief of the magazine, Stephane Charbonnier, said Islam could not be excluded from freedom of the press. He said: “If we can poke fun at everything in France, if we can talk about anything in France apart from Islam or the consequences of Islamism, that is annoying.”
Mr Charbonnier, also known as Charb, said he did not see the attack on the magazine as the work of French Muslims, but of what he called ‘idiot extremists’. The cover showed Mohammad saying: “100 lashes if you are not dying of laughter.”
Inside, there was an editorial, attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, and more cartoons – one showing the Prophet with a clown’s red nose. Depiction of the Prophet is strictly prohibited in Islam, but the magazine denied it was trying to be provocative.
Source: DailyMail
Leave a comment