At least four people were killed
and four others were critically wounded as a result of a hostage standoff in a
kosher supermarket in eastern Paris on Friday. French media reported on Friday
that the police raided the kosher supermarket where a gunman took at least five
people hostage. A number of hostages were freed in the raid, local press
reported. In an address to the nation
just a few hours after the standoff ended, French President Francois Hollande
denounced the hostage takeover of the kosher shop as "an anti-Semitic
act." News footage of the Hyper
Cacher kosher supermarket in the Vincennes district showed dozens of heavily
armed police officers massed outside of two entrances. The assault began with
gunfire and a loud explosion at the door, after which hostages were rushed out.
Reuters photographs taken from
long distance showed a man holding an infant and looking distressed being
herded into an ambulance by police. Others were carried in on stretchers. Almost simultaneously in another part of
Paris, the two brothers wanted for the shooting of 12 people at the offices of
satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo were killed in a raid on Friday by security
forces on the print works where they were holed up with a hostage, a government
source said. Le Monde newspaper quoted a
police official as saying that the hostage-taker at the kosher supermarket in
eastern Paris had also been killed. That hostage-taker is believed to have
links to the same Islamist group as the two brothers.
French television images showed
some people running out of the supermarket in eastern Paris. The exact fate of
all the hostages there and at the one at the print works was not immediately clear.
Minutes earlier, loud explosions were heard near the supermarket and television
images showed a large contingent of police storming the building. The images
showed a number of people believed to be the hostages running away from the
building as police raided the area, firing their guns. The crisis began about
three hours earlier when an armed man took several hostages and one person was
wounded in a shootout at a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris on Friday,
police sources confirmed on Friday. There are conflicting reports as to whether
there anyone was killed in the incident.
A woman in tears approached
French police outside the kosher supermarket where hostages were held captive
by a gunman in northeast Paris, saying her 37-year-old daughter just managed to
call from the supermarket and told her five people have already been killed,
the BBC reported. The daughter said many
hostages were in the basement of the supermarket. The conversation was
interrupted by other hostages making the woman stop talking for her own safety.
There is no official confirmation
of these claims.
It was not immediately clear
whether there was a link between that gunman and the two suspects wanted for 12
killings at the Charlie Hebdo satirical weekly on Wednesday. However a police source said the
hostage-taker resembled the man suspected of killing a policewoman in a
southern suburb of Paris on Thursday. That man in turn is believed to be a
member of the same jihadist group as the two Charlie Hebdo suspects. The exact number of hostages taken was
unclear. Local media spoke of at least five. The police source said the man was
equipped with automatic weapons.
Police immediately cordoned off
the area and a helicopter was flying overhead. French anti-terrorist police
stormed a small printing works in northern France where the two chief suspects
in Wednesday's attack on a Paris newspaper had taken a hostage, explosions and
gunfire ringing out around the building.
Reuters quoted a police officer at the scene as saying that the two
suspects were killed in the standoff. The
building in the small town of Dammartin-en-Goele, set in marsh and woodland,
had been under siege since the gunmen abandoned a high-speed car chase and took
refuge there early on Friday. A helicopter hovered overhead. "At the time of speaking, police forces
are in the process, I hope, of apprehending the perpetrators of this act of
savagery and making sure they can do no more harm," Prime Minister Manuel
Valls said. No further details of the
security forces' late afternoon operation were immediately available. Separately, Paris police named a man they
were looking for in connection with Thursday's killing of a policewoman as 32
year-old Amedy Coulibaly. They said were also looking for a 26 year-old woman
called Hayat Boumeddiene. They described both as armed and dangerous.
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