Charlie Hebdo: major operation north-east of Paris in hunt for suspects – live updates
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Updated
- Interior minister says major operation underway in Dammartin-en-Goele
- Suspects reportedly holed up in printing business on industrial estate
- Reports of one hostage being taken and shots fired
- Islamic State hails Charlie Hebdo killers as heroes
- Kouachi brothers reported to be on US no-fly list
- Cherif Kouachi met key al-Qaida operative while in prison
- Head of MI5 calls for more powers in the wake of Paris attack
French President François Hollande is due to attend a briefing on the apparent siege. He is expected at the interior ministry for an update on the situation.
More detail is emerging on the location of the apparent siege:
Le Monde reports that the company at the centre of the police operation, Création Tendance Decouverte, makes signs and exhibition stands for other companies. Its head office is in Paris. The police operation is taking place at its workshop which is in Dammartin-en-Goële.
AFP says one person is being held hostage in the building.
Audio update from siege town
Dammartin-en-Goele is completely sealed off by police Kim Willsher reports in a phone update from the edge of the town. “It’s a very confusing situation” she said amid unconfirmed reports of injuries in a shoot out and hostages being taken.
Grégory, a local resident in Dammartin, told BFMTV by phone that locals were staying at home behind locked doors, writes Angelique Chrisafis.
He said he was around 300m from the building involved in the police operation, describing it as a small building on the industrial site. He said he had only realised what was going on this morning when a massive police contingent arrived in the area and helicopters began circling overhead. “Everyone is blocked in their homes behind locked doors.”
Summary
Here’s a brief rundown, from Josh Halliday, on what we know so far about the siege:
- A major operation is underway in Danmartin-en-Goele, north-east of Paris, the French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve has said.
- The Charlie Hebdo suspects are reportedly holed up at a printing business on an industrial estate and have taken at least one hostage.
- Police officers are said to have opened hostage negotiations with the suspects amid reports that shots were fired during a car chase earlier on Friday morning.
- The Paris prosecutor’s office has denied reports that one person has been killed in a shootout. Three primary schools in the area are on lockdown.
Updated
AFP says the siege is taking place in a printing business not a construction firm.
The suspects were holed up in a small printing business named CTD, a source close to the investigation said. “It’s not sure how many people are inside,” the source said.
It also quoted a source denying that Reuters claim of one fatality in the shoot out.
Updated
Reuters reports that least one person was killed and several injured in shootout before at least one hostage was taken in Dammartin-en-Goele in France. This is all unverified by the authorities, who have only confirmed that a major operation is under way.
Le Figaro has published an image of the building where the siege is believed to be taking place.
Summary
Police are reported to have entered negotiations with the suspects amid still unconfirmed claims that they are holding at least one hostage.
AFP has this brief account:
Shots were fired during a car chase and at least one hostage was taken to the north-east of Paris Friday, in the same area police were hunting for two brothers accused of slaughtering 12 people in an Islamist assault.The hostage drama was underway at a business in Dammartin-en-Goele, to the north-east of Paris, and came 48 hours into a massive manhunt for the Islamist gunmen who attacked the Charlie Hebdo offices on Wednesday.It was not immediately clear how many people were being held hostage, according to a police source close to the investigation.
A BBC correspondent in the area reports seeing five helicopters above an industrial area on the edge of Dammartin-en-Goele.
'Major operation' confirmed
French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve has confirmed that a major operation is underway in Dammartin-en-Goele where police helicopters have been deployed.2:11 PM - 9 Jan 2015
'Shots fired' and 'hostages taken' in manhunt
There are unconfirmed reports that shots have been fired and hostages taken in the manhunt for the Kouachi brothers.
2:04 PM - 9 Jan 2015
The Guardian’s al-Qaida expert Jason Burke, has more on Cherif Kouachi’s reported links with the terrorist network.
Djamal Beghal is the Algerian-born French militant who reportedly became Cherif Kouachi’s mentor in prison in 2005 and 2006 France when the suspected Charlie-Hebdo attacker was detained for his involvement in a network funnelling volunteers to fight the US in Iraq alongside al-Qaida.He is also an example of how the now long-forgotten violent struggles of the early 1990s in many Islamic countries against militants still have an impact 20 years or more later, and how extremism continues to function through personal rather than organisational links.
In 1997 Beghal and his family moved to Britain, settling in Leicester. Beghal told interrogators in Dubai – in a confession that he later said was extracted under torture - that his aim was to merely to study with the London-based Jordanian radical cleric Abu Qutada whose taped lectures he had frequently heard in France.Abu Qutada encouraged his admirer to distribute texts and tapes of his speeches across the Channel. “Abu Qutada never asked me to set up a network for him in France but just to spread his message,” Beghal said in his interrogation. French investigators did not believe this is the truth.
During this time Beghal spent time at the Finsbury Park mosque, then under the influence of Abu Hamza. Extradited from the UK, Hamza was convicted in the US last year of 11 charges of instigating terrorist acts.
In 1998 Beghal and his spiritual mentor discussed the duty of hijra, the flight of the faithful from impious lands, he told investigators. Afghanistan was mentioned as a possible destination.In the autumn of 2000, Beghal travelled to Afghanistan where he underwent basic training at a camp run by bin Laden’s associates near Kabul.
Investigators believed he made the journey specifically to seek help from al-Qaida with a plan to blow up the US embassy in Paris. Beghal said the idea was al-Qaida’s.
In the spring of 2001 Beghal told his interrogators he was contacted by an aide of Osama bin Laden.
“He told me that the time for action had come and asked me if I was ready. I said I was and he said that the plan was to blow up the US embassy in Paris. He gave me three presents: a stick of niswak (wood used for cleaning teeth), a bottle of perfume and a prayer cap. He said they were from bin Laden. He told me that 350,000 Francs ($55,000) had been placed in a bank account in Morocco for me.”
Beghal claimed he had been radicalised in the Afghan camps but before that he had shunned violence. However he was convicted by a French court after being arrested in August 2001 and sentenced to ten years in prison.
It was there that he met Cherif Kouachi and appears to have played a role familiar to intelligence services working to counter Islamic militancy – of the older veteran who reinforces and channels a younger man’s existing extremist tendencies - much as Qatada or bin Laden may have done for him.
In Britain Sir Malcolm Rifkind, chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, has backed MI5’s call for snooping powers in the wake of Wednesday’s killings.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programmeRifkind said:
I do entirely endorse what’s been said by Sir Andrew Parker, the head of MI5, that the evidence suggests that terrorist threat in the UK is as serious as it has ever been ... As Mr Parker pointed out the intelligence agencies are finding it increasingly difficult to be able to intercept communications between terrorists and people they are working with.What is emerging in Paris is that the two individual responsible for the terrible massacre at Charlie Hebdo were communicating with people in the Yemen over the last days, last few weeks.The hugely important objective is to enable intelligence agencies to be able to get hold of these communications to try to prevent incidents of this kind ...What we are talking about is ensuring that they have the technical capability and the legal authority to use modern methods to target, to find individuals who may be plotting serious crime ...We know from Paris that these individuals were already on the radar screen.What’s at issue is whether the communication companies ... should be required to keep records so that if at any stage there is a need to consider interception it can be done under lawful authority.
Islamic State praises attackers as heros
The Islamic State group, which control large parts of Iraq and Syria, has praised the gunmen behind the Charlie Hebdo killings as “heroic jihadists”.
Citing the monitoring monitoring group Site Intelligence, Reuters reports:
Site said Islamic State praised the gunmen in a brief note in its daily audio bulletin, which was distributed on Twitter and jihadi forums on Thursday.
4:10 AM - 9 Jan 2015
Summary
Welcome to the third day of our live coverage of the aftermath of the deadly attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris as a massive manhunt for the two suspected gunmen continues.
Here’s a summary of the latest developments
- Tens of thousands of French troops have joined the police hunt for the suspects which is currently focused on large wooded area north east of Paris. Police have deployed sniffer dogs, heat seeking cameras and helicopters around the towns of Longpont and Villers-Cotterêts in the Aisne region, close to where the suspect brothers were reported to have robbed a petrol station.
- More details have emerged about what counter terrorist authorities knew about the suspects, Chérif Kouachi, 32, and Saïd Kouachi, 34. The French justice minister that Said Kouachi had travelled to Yemen, where US officials said he had trained with al-Qaeda. Both brothers were also on a US no-fly list. Chérif Kouachi was arrested trying to travel to Iraq in 2005 and later imprisoned for helping to channel fighters to Iraq.
- While in prison Cherif Kouachi is reported to have met key al-Qaida operative, Djamel Beghal, who is alleged to have recruited shoe bomber, Richard Reid. A photograph has emerged purporting to show Cherif Kouachi alongside Beghal.
- A rally against the attack is planned for Paris on Sunday. Officials have announced the exclusion of Marine Le Pen and her National Front.
- Surviving journalists at Charlie Hebdo magazine are being offered help to continue publishing the magazine after they confirmed plans to print a million copies of next week’s edition. The French culture minister called for the release of 1m euros to sustain Charlie Hebdo. Donations have been pledged by the Guardian and Google as the French media launched a fundraising drive. The French paper Libération said it would host Charlie Hebdo for the production of forthcoming issues.
- Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has signalled plans to publish the Charlie Hebdo cartoons of the prophet Muhammad which appear to have prompted the attack. British media outlets, including the Guardian, have been defending their decision not to reprint the cartoons.
- The head of Britain’s security agency MI5 has called for more powers to deal with growing threat of terrorists in the wake of Wednesday’s attack. Andrew Parker said: “My sharpest concern is the growing gap between the increasingly challenging threat and the decreasing availability of capabilities to address it.”