France on edge amid manhunt and mourning
PUBLISHED ONJanuary 10, 2015 7:00 PMByBhagyashree Garekar
French security forces yesterday fanned out in heavy armoured vehicles and helicopters in a hunt for two "armed and dangerous" brothers suspected of gunning down 12 people in a cold-blooded attack on a satirical weekly which lampooned Islam.
The mood was tense. Prime Minister Manuel Valls said he feared the two militants, Said Kouachi, 34, and Cherif Kouachi, 32, could strike again. A third suspect surrendered to police.
There were scattered, unconfirmed reports of sightings of the two men. One said two masked attackers carrying semi-automatic rifles had robbed a petrol station 70km north-east of Paris, prompting French police and anti-terrorism forces to deploy en masse.
Across France, hundreds of police officers and soldiers patrolled airports, schools and tourist sites, including the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre.
"We are confronting an exceptional risk that can lead, at any moment, to other instances of violence," Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said, adding that seven people were being questioned about the shootings. The country has raised the terror alert status to its maximum level.
The bells of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris tolled at midday as the stunned nation observed a minute's silence after experiencing the worst terrorist attack in more than 40 years on Wednesday.
Public transport came to a halt and people gathered outside the headquarters of the Charlie Hebdo magazine in pouring rain, holding signs that said: "Je Suis Charlie" (I am Charlie).
The mourning was spiked with tension after gunfire rang out for a second day in the capital. A gunman armed with an automatic rifle shot dead a policewoman and wounded a city employee just to the south of Paris.
There was an explosion at a kebab shop in eastern France. It was unclear if the two incidents were related to Wednesday's attack.
In what seemed to be retaliatory action, Muslim places of worship in two French towns were fired upon overnight. France's Muslim Council called on "all imams in all of France's mosques to condemn violence and terrorism wherever it comes from in the strongest possible way".
There were demonstrations of solidarity around the world. Tens of thousands of people rallied at public squares and French embassies in various cities.
In a sign of defiance, the magazine, which lost eight journalists in the attack, said it would publish as scheduled next Wednesday and print one million copies, instead of the usual 60,000.
"We are all suffering, with grief, with fear, but we will do it anyway because stupidity will not win," one of its staff, columnist Patrick Pelloux, told Agence France-Presse.
From Paris to Sydney, they are all Charlie
PARIS - Tens of thousands of people, many holding signs saying "Je suis Charlie", rallied across France and around the world to show support and express grief after the killing of 12 people at the Paris headquarters of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo.
Crowds gathered in Paris, Toulouse, Lyon, Lille and Marseille, as well as in Trafalgar Square in London, at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, in Washington and New York, and in Sydney, Australia.
In India, artist Sudarsan Pattnaik paid tribute with a sand sculpture showing the faces of some of the murdered magazine staff with the words "Bullets can't stop pen" underneath.
At the Place de la Republique in central Paris, where more than 10,000 assembled, placards with the words that mean "I am Charlie" were raised. Others waved their smartphones with an image of a pen on them.
Some held a pen or a candle, or copies of the Charlie Hebdo magazine; some chanted "All together with Charlie".
With flashlights, marchers spelt out "NOT AFRAID" in capital letters. As many as 50,000 turned out across France, police said.
Yesterday, office workers stood shoulder to shoulder, buses and metros halted in the capital, and only the toll of bells and sound of weeping broke the silence as France honoured those killed in the massacre.
"Charlie will be free!" cried a woman joining a large crowd in front of Paris' medieval Notre Dame cathedral a moment before noon when the country observed a national minute of silence.
In New York's Union Square, hundreds of people held handmade "Je suis Charlie" signs or displayed the message on their phones. Some raised pens or held the magazine's covers.
"Charlie was a symbol of French expression," said Ms Caroline Meziere, 36, who works in finance and grew up in France. "It's shocking that they killed an entire newspaper over its sense of humour."
In the United States capital, International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde, of France, said she attended the rally to show solidarity with the "cartoonists who have been a part of our daily lives for years".
The Consulate-General of France for Hong Kong and Macau observed one minute's silence at midday yesterday, as did the French Embassy in Beijing.
In Trafalgar Square, flowers, Charlie signs, pens, pencils and a candle were laid out on the ground in a symbol of defiance.
"I'm just sad, I'm just shocked, I just don't understand," said Ms Marie Humbert, a 25-year-old graphic designer from Paris who held a Charlie placard.
This article was first published on January 9, 2015.
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