– ‘Appalling anti-Semitic act’ –
In what President Francois Hollande called an “appalling anti-Semitic act”, Coulibaly took terrified shoppers hostage hours before the Jewish Sabbath, killing four.
As the sun set, the brothers in Dammartin-en-Goele charged out of the building with guns blazing in a desperate last stand, before being cut down.
Within minutes, elite commando units moved in Paris against Coulibaly, who had threatened to execute his hostages unless the brothers were released.
Up to five people – including a three-year-old boy – survived hidden inside a refrigerator for five hours, with police pinpointing their location using their mobile phones, prosecutors and relatives said.
In the printing firm, the brothers took the manager hostage, later releasing him after he helped Said with a neck wound, while a second man hid beneath a sink upstairs.
After Friday’s dramatic events, Hollande warned grimly that the threats facing France were not over – comments followed by a chilling new threat from the Yemen-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula group.
AQAP top sharia official Harith al-Nadhari warned France to “stop your aggression against the Muslims” or face further attacks, in comments released by the SITE monitoring group.
German newspaper Bild said the bloodshed in France could signal the start of a wave of attacks in Europe, citing communications by Islamic State leaders intercepted by US intelligence.
It said the US National Security Agency had intercepted communications in which leaders of the jihadist group announced the next wave of attacks, the tabloid said in its Sunday edition, citing unnamed sources in the US intelligence services.
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