Islamist gunmen feared hunting more targets after massacring 12 people at Paris magazine

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Islamist gunmen feared hunting more targets after massacring 12 people at Paris magazine
DEBKAfile Special Report January 7, 2015,
The heavily armed gunmen who murdered 12 people including police officers at the satirical Charlie Hebdo magazine in central Paris Wednesday, Jan. 7, got clear away and are feared by French and other European security agencies to be seeking out more targets. They are on the loose with AK-47 assault guns, a supply of ammo, and possibly a grenade launcher. Another 10 people were injured, 5 critically.
France has raised its terror alert to its highest level as it launches a massive manhunt for three killers. Its European neighbors have also taken precautions.

This act of terror raised a whole new set of concerns. The gunmen conducted themselves in the calm, deliberate manner of trained professional soldiers, rather than crazed suicidal jihadis. Their combat experience was evident, whether from fighting in the Islamic State’s battles in Iraq and Syria or other Islamist arenas.
Three years ago, Charlie Hebdo ran cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad and in the current New Year, poked fun at ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.  French security authorities infer that the terrorists, dressed in black and masked, were gunning for predetermined targets from the fact that they carried lists and asked for their targets by name when they passed through the corridors of the magazine building. They then shot the journalists on their list with cold-blooded precision.
According to one unconfirmed report, the Charlie Hebdo editor and lead cartoonist were among the victims.

President Francois Hollande, who arrived on the scene within minutes, commented that “40 people were saved.” They were evidently saved because they did not appear on the gunmen’s death list.debkafile’s counter-terror sources note that this attack was the first instance in the war of terror, that Islamists murdered Western journalists for their views on religion in the heart of a West European capital.
Shouting “Allahu Akhbar!” and “We have avenged the Prophet’s honor!” theyleft the building and sped past a police force in the street, shooting accurately at the windscreens of their vehicles. They then jumped into a black getaway car which stood waiting with open doors. A short while later, they stole another vehicle and switched cars.

The president called an emergency cabinet meeting shortly after the attack. Our sources note that although French security and intelligence services have maintained a high terror alert for the past month after a series of incidents against Jewish targets, they failed to predict or forestall one of the most spectacular Islamic attacks seen in Europe in recent years.

At least 12 dead in Paris after attack on satirical newspaper, Charlie Hebdo
Reuters/Jan. 07, 2015

PARIS: Hooded gunmen stormed the Paris offices of a weekly satirical magazine renowned for lampooning radical Islam, killing at least 12 people, including two police officers in the worst militant attack on French soil in recent decades. One of the men was captured on video shouting “Allah!” as four shots rang out. Two assailants are then seen calmly leaving the scene and remain at large. Charlie Hebdo (Charlie Weekly) is renowned for courting controversy with satirical attacks on political and religious leaders and has published numerous cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammad. The last tweet on its account mocked Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, which has taken control of large swathes of Iraq and Syria. “This is a terrorist attack, there is no doubt about it,” President Francois Hollande told reporters after rushing to the scene of the attack. His government raised France’s security level to the highest level and scheduled an emergency cabinet meeting.

The gunmen fled toward the eastern  Paris suburbs after holding up a car, police officials said. “There is possibility of other attacks and other sites are being secured,” Police union official Rocco Contento said. Sirens could be heard across  Paris as Prime Minister Manuel Valls said security would be ramped up at transport hubs, religious sites, media offices and department stores. The White House said U.S. security officials were in contact with their French counterparts. “If the perpetrators are still at large, we’re going to track them down, and we’re going to work with the French to do that,” a White House spokesman told MSNBC television.

Another 20 people were injured in the attack, including four or five critically. Police union official Contento described the scene inside the offices as “carnage.” “About a half an hour ago two black-hooded men entered the building with Kalashnikovs (rifles),” witness Benoit Bringer told TV station iTELE. “A few minutes later we heard lots of shots.” In a video shot by journalist Martin Boudot from a rooftop near the magazine’s offices, a man can be heard screaming “Allah,” followed the sound of three or four shots. “They’re coming out. There are two of them,” says a new voice on the video as two men appear in the frame, then raise their arms in a shooting posture. France last year reinforced its anti-terrorism laws and is already on alert after calls from Islamist militants to attack its citizens and interests in reprisal for French military strikes on Islamist strongholds in the Middle East and Africa.

The attack, as yet unclaimed, comes amid what a number of commentators have identified as rising xenophobia in Europe, with thousands of protesters in several German cities rallying earlier this week against Muslim immigration. France’s five-million-strong Muslim population is Europe’s largest. “I am extremely angry. These are criminals, barbarians. They have sold their soul to hell. This is not freedom. This is not Islam and I hope the French will come out united at the end of this,” said Hassen Chalghoumi, imam of the Drancy mosque in Paris’s Seine-Saint-Denis northern suburb.

Dozens of police and emergency services were at the site as police secured a wide perimeter around the shooting site, where a Reuters reporter saw a car riddled with bullet holes.
Late last year, a man shouting “Allahu Akbar” (“God is greatest”) injured 13 by ramming a vehicle into a crowd in the eastern city of Dijon. French officials say several attacks were prevented in recent weeks and Valls has said France had “never before faced such a high threat linked to terrorism.” A firebomb attack gutted the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo in November 2011 after it put an image of the Prophet Mohammad on its cover in what it described as a Shariah edition.

While there was no immediate claim for the shooting, one supporter of ISIS suggested in a tweet the image of Mohammed was the reason for the attack. The last major attack in  Paris was in the mid-1990s when the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) carried out a spate of attacks, including the bombing of a commuter train in 1995 which killed eight people and injured 150.