17 people were killed at four locations between 7 and 9 January 2015.
On 7 January 2015 two masked gunmen forced their way into the offices of the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris, France.
They killed 12 people, including the editor Stéphane “Charb” Charbonnier, 7 other Charlie Hebdo employees, and 2 National Police officers, and wounded 11 others. Charlie Hebdo had attracted attention for its depictions of Muhammad, the founder of Islam. The gunman fired up to 50 shots with automatic weapons, shouting “Allahu Akbar”.
Police detained several people during the manhunt for the two main suspects. A third suspect voluntarily attended a police station after hearing he was wanted, and was not charged. The assailants were described by police as “armed and dangerous”, and the threat level in Île-de-France and Picardy was raised to its highest possible status. On 9 January, police tracked the assailants to an industrial estate in Dammartin-en-Goële, where they took a hostage. Another gunman also took hostages, at a kosher supermarket near the Porte de Vincennes.
GIGN (a special operations unit of the French Armed Forces) combined with RAID and BRI (special operations units of the French Police) conducted simultaneous raids in Dammartin and at Porte de Vincennes. Three terrorists were killed and four hostages were killed in the Vincennes supermarket before the intervention; some hostages were injured. A fifth suspect is still on the run.
The phrase Je suis Charlie (French for “I am Charlie”) came to be a common worldwide sign of solidarity against the attacks.
