Four hostages and three terrorists were killed Friday in a two separate terrorist incidents on Friday at a kosher store in eastern Paris and a factory to the north of the French capital. More than a dozen people had been held by an Islamist terrorist in the Jewish store before it was stormed by police. Separately, the two gunman in the Charlie Hebdo massacre were killed in a police raid of a factory to the north of Paris where they had also taken a hostage.
The hostage talker was named as Amedy Coulibay, 32, and acted with the help of a 26-year-old woman named Hayat Boumeddiene, who is still at large. Coulibay is believed to be the one responsible for shooting a policewoman dead in south Paris yesterday. Authorities say he screamed "You know who I am" when he stormed the building on Friday morning.
Kosher restaurants and Jewish schools and stores across Paris were on lockdown Friday.
The supermarket is located just 800 meters from the ORT Daniel Mayer High School in Montreuil. The siege started at 1 p.m. local time as many students were leaving the school to go home for Shabbat,and ended with police storming the building at 5 p.m.
The gunman at the supermarket was suspected of being the same man who killed a policewoman in Montrouge, southern Paris, on Thursday. He is thought to have links to the assailants who stormed satirical magazine 'Charlie Hebdo' a day earlier and suspected to be a member of the same jihadist group as brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, who on Friday were holed up in a factory near Charles de Gaulle airport and held one person hostage there until police raided the building and killed the two brothers.
Twelve people were killed and many others wounded Wednesday when masked gunmen stormed the offices 'Charlie Hebdo' and opened fire. The attacks have sent shock waves throughout France and the Western world.
Jewish sites have previously been targets for terrorist attacks in France. In 2012, a gunman on a motorbike shot and killed a teacher and three children at a Jewish school in Toulouse. The gunman, a 23-year-old Mohammed Merah, a Frenchman of Algerian descent said he attacked the school because "the Jews kill our brothers and sisters in Palestine."
