Charlie Hebdo massacreFrance pays silent tribute to editor and staff of magazine that defied al-Qaeda
Thursday January 8 France observed a minute's silence this morning to pay its respects to the 12 people killed in the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices yesterday.
The victims, who were named this morning, included the editor of the satirical magazine and his bodyguard, four other celebrated cartoonists, two columnists, a guest editor, a proof reader, a caretaker, and a policeman who was shot dead as he lay injured on the pavement outside. Eleven others were wounded, four seriously. The two gunmen drove off towards the north of Paris, where they abandoned their car and hijacked another. The car was this morning spotted at a petrol station from which the pair stole fuel and food. The police have identified the suspects as Cherif and Said Kouachi, brothers aged 32 and 34, and this morning arrested a number of people believed to have been connected to them. Cherif Kouachi had served 18 months in jail for membership of a group sending jihadist fighters to Iraq. Corinne Rey, another cartoonist at the magazine, told reporters yesterday that she had let the attackers into the building after they threatened her daughter as she was on her way back to work from the childminder. She said they had told her they were al-Qaeda terrorists from Yemen. The pair are said to have gone straight to the room where the weekly editorial conference was in session and demanded: "Where is Charb? Where is Charb?" They shot the editor Stéphane Charbonnier, then turned their fire on others in the room and in the offices beyond. Rey said that she had watched from a hiding place under a table as the gunmen murdered her colleagues Georges Wolinski and Jean Cabut. The other cartoonists who killed were Bernard Verlhac, who was known as Tignous, and Philippe Honore. The magazine's final tweet before the attack was an Honore caricature of the Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, wishing him good health. In 2011 Charlie Hebdo published cartoons of the prophet Mohammed and its offices were subsequently firebombed. Charbonnier, whose work appeared under the name Charb, was reportedly put on an al-Qaeda "most wanted" list and had been living under police protection, but he repeatedly asserted that the magazine would continue to lampoon Islam, as it did other religions and the Establishment. Staff said today that the massacre would not prevent the next issue appearing - and with a print run of a million rather than the usual 60,000. Last night thousands gathered in the Place de la Republique in Paris and other squares across the country, carrying placards declaring "Je suis Charlie" and "We are not afraid". Today is the first national day of mourning in France since the death of Pope John Paul II in 2005. The murdered cartoonists
Stéphane Charbonnier, 47, had contributed to Charlie Hebdo for more than 20 years and had been the editor since 2009. He had been living under police protection since the magazine's offices were firebombed in 2011 after publishing cartoons of the prophet Mohammed. In an interview the following year, he said: "I have no fear of reprisals. I have no kids, no wife, no car, no debt. It certainly sounds a little pompous, but I prefer to die standing than to live on my knees "
In 2013 his name appeared on a list of nine people who were apparently al-Qaeda targets. 
Four other renowned cartoonists were killed in the attack. Bernard Velhac, George Wolinski and Jean Cabut are seen in this Reuters photograph with white-haired fellow cartoonist François Cavanna at the 2008 Cannes festival.
Cavanna, who died last January, was co-founder in 1960 of the monthly magazine Hara-Kiri and its weekly offspring Hara-Kiri hebdo, to which both Cabut and Wolinski contributed. Hara-Kiri folded in 1970 amid controversy over a cartoon about the death of Charles de Gaulle, but reappeared the next week as Charlie Hebdo. Cabut, who signed his work Cabu, was 76 and Wolinski 80. Velhac, who worked under the name Tignous, was 58 and a member of the cartooning for peace movement set up by Kofi Annan in an initiative aimed at promoting tolerance. Philippe Honore, 73, had drawn the caricature below that was used in the last Charlie Hebdo tweet before the attack. In it, the magazine wishes the Isis leader The other victimsElsa Cayat, a psychoanalyst who wrote a column entitled On the Couch, was the only woman to die in the attack;
Bernard Maris, 68, was an economist who contributed to the magazine under the name Uncle Bernard; Michel Renaud did not work for Charlie Hebdo, but was there as a guest editor; Frederic Boisseau, 42, was a caretaker who had been in the building's reception; Ahmed Merabet, 42, was the first policeman on the scene. He was the officer shot dead as he lay on the pavement when the gunmen made their escape - and the subject of the video and front page pictures that have dominated British coverage of the attack. He was Muslim; Franck Brinsolaro, 49, was Charbonnier's bodyguard; Mustapha Ourrad was a proof reader. |
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France is today in shock, in front of a terrorist attack.
This newspaper was threatened several times in the past. We need to show that we are a united country. We have to be firm, we have to be strong. We are threatened because we are a country of freedom. We fight threats and we will punish the attackers. - President Hollande 
I am shocked that people can have attacked a newspaper in France, a secular republic. I don't understand it.
I don't understand how people can attack a newspaper with heavy weapons. A newspaper is not a weapon of war. - Gerard Biard, editor-in-chief of Charlie Hebdo, who was in London at the time of the shootings 
I offer my condolences to the families and friends of those killed - the cartoonists, journalists and those who were trying to protect them.
They paid a very high price for exercising their comic liberty. Very little seems funny today. - Ian Hislop 
We stand absolutely united with the French people against terrorism and against this threat to our values – free speech, the rule of law, democracy. It's absolutely essential we defend those values today and every day.
- David Cameron 
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