French authorities searched Saturday for the remaining known suspect in this week’s terror attacks as the country grappled with heartbreak following another day of blood and horror.
Police killed three suspects during raids Friday — one wanted in the fatal shooting of a policewoman and four hostages, the other two in the massacre at the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine.
The attack at the Paris office of the satirical magazine left 12 dead on Wednesday.
“The nation is relieved tonight,” Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Friday.
But the French government’s work is not over.
There’s still a lot of healing to do, a lot of questions to answer on preventing future attacks. And a woman wanted over the policewoman’s shooting Thursday, named as Hayat Boumeddiene, is still at large.
France will remain at a heightened security as investigations continue, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Saturday after an emergency security meeting.
All necessary measures will also be taken to ensure the safety of people who attend a unity rally planned in Paris on Sunday, he said. Extra steps will also be taken to protect religious institutions.
Charlie Hebdo attackers
The flurry of deadly events Friday started in Dammartin-en-Goele, northeast of Paris, where the suspects in the magazine attacks, brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, took refuge in a print shop in an industrial area after two days on the run.
After they walked into the shop, a salesman identified only as Didier told France Info radio that he inadvertently shook one of the gunmen’s hands when the pair arrived.
The salesman said he thought the heavily armed man dressed in black was a police officer.
As Didier left, the armed man said, “Go, we don’t kill civilians.” Didier said, “It wasn’t normal. I didn’t know what was going on.”
Police swoop in
It’s unclear who alerted police to the brothers’ whereabouts. The area went on lockdown — with children stuck in schools, roads closed and shops shuttered. Squads of police in tactical gear, convoys of police vans and medical teams filled Dammartin-en-Goele’s streets.
The gunmen holed up at the warehouse told police they wanted to die as martyrs, Yves Albarello, who is in the French Parliament, said on channel iTele.
Four helicopters landed nearby as men scaled the roof of the building, and gunshots and explosions erupted.
Soon after, local officials said that the brothers were dead and a man hiding in the building was safe.
Hostages at kosher grocery store
At the same time on Friday, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) away in eastern Paris, a similar crisis played out at a kosher grocery store.
Amedy Coulibaly — the same man who authorities believe killed a policewoman Thursday south of Paris — took a number of hostages there. His partner is Boumeddiene, who remains on the run.
Up to 20 heavily armed police officers moved into the store in Porte de Vincennes and came out with a number of civilians.
Not everyone made it.
French President Francois Hollande said four people were killed.
Israeli government sources told CNN that Hollande had told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that four hostages were killed and 15 were rescued. The four hostages were killed by the gunman before police stormed the market, sources said.
One of the hostages, named only as Marie, told CNN affiliate BFMTV that two store customers were killed by the gunman — and that she was very happy to be alive.
“As soon as he got inside, he started shooting. He scared us because he told us: I am not afraid to die and he said either I die or I go to jail for 40 years. He knew this was his last day,” she said.
Hollande called the Porte de Vincennes deaths an “anti-Semitic” act and urged citizens not to lash out against Muslims.
“Those who committed these acts have nothing to do with the Muslim religion,” he said. “Unity is our best weapon.”
How did France get here?
A pair of heavily armed men on Wednesday stormed the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, the satirical magazine known for its provocative, often profane, take on religion, politics and society.
They burst into a meeting, called out individuals, and executed them. The dead included editor and cartoonist Stephane Charbonnier, and four other well-known cartoonists known by their pen names: Cabu, Wolinski, Honore and Tignous.
Authorities followed a lead Thursday morning from a gas station attendant near Villers-Cotterets, whom Cherif Kouachi, 32, and Said Kouachi, 34, reportedly threatened as they stole food and gas.
As the suspects moved, French police pursued leads.
Ties to Islamist extremists?
Said Kouachi, the elder brother, spent several months in Yemen in 2011, receiving weapons training and working with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, according to U.S. officials.
His younger brother, Cherif, has a long history of jihad and anti-Semitism, according to documents obtained by CNN. In a 400-page court record, he is described as wanting to go to Iraq through Syria “to go and combat the Americans.”
Cherif was a close associate of Coulibaly, a Western intelligence source told CNN.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility for orchestrating the Charlie Hebdo attack, the founder of the magazine The Intercept, Jeremy Scahill, told CNN. CNN has not independently confirmed this claim.
A man claiming to be Amedy Coulibaly, the hostage-taker at the Paris grocery store, told CNN affiliate BFMTV that he belonged to the Islamist militant group ISIS.
The Western intelligence source said Coulibaly lived with Boumeddiene, his alleged accomplice in the police shooting.
Boumeddiene exchanged 500 phone calls with the wife of Cherif Kouachi in 2014, according to Paris prosecutor Francois Molin. The wife told investigators that her husband and Coulibaly knew each other well.
French media outlets AFP, iTele and Le Point reported that police released Hamyd Mourad, 18, who turned himself in Wednesday after seeing his name on social media in connection with the Charlie Hebdo attack.
What’s next for the magazine?
Charlie Hebdo plans to go on even without its leader and cherished staffers. It’s set to publish many extra copies of its latest edition next Wednesday.
“I don’t know if I’m afraid any more, because I’ve seen fear. I was scared for my friends, and they are dead,” said Patrick Pelloux, a columnist for the magazine.
He and many others are defiant.
“I know that they didn’t want us to be quiet,” Pelloux said of the slain colleagues. “They would be assassinated twice, if we remained silent.”
Former Charlie Hebdo journalist Caroline Fourest said the magazine’s remaining journalists were back at work, despite it being “amazingly hard.” One of the attack survivors has drawn next week’s cover, she told CNN.
And, she added, the extremists failed in their aims. They have made the name of Charlie Hebdo internationally famous, she said, at the same time as exposing their own weakness.
“The jihadists are so weak that they are afraid (of) cartoons. Can you imagine?” she said. “But the cartoons will defeat them.”