PARIS: Heavily armed gunmen massacred 12 people on Wednesday after bursting into the Paris offices of a satirical weekly that had long outraged Muslims with controversial cartoons of the prophet Mohammed.
The late-morning attack on the Charlie Hebdo headquarters in a quiet neighbourhood was the bloodiest in France for at least four decades.
Victims included three cartoonists and the chief editor who had been holding a morning meeting when the assailants armed with Kalashnikovs opened fire, officials said.
Police said witnesses heard the attackers shout “we have avenged the prophet” and “Allahu akbar” (God is greatest).
President Francois Hollande immediately rushed to the scene of what he called “an act of exceptional barbarism.”
An amateur video shot after the bloodbath showed two men masked and dressed head-to-toe in black military style outfits leaving the building, then shooting a wounded policeman in cold blood as he lay on the pavement.
The gunmen, who appear to be calm, then returned to a black Citroen and drove off.
Large numbers of police and ambulances rushed to the scene, where shocked residents spilled into the streets. Reporters saw bullet-riddled windows and people being carried out on stretchers.
The gunmen remained at large by early evening and there was no claim of responsibility. The interior minister said three assailants took part.
Two police were confirmed among the dead and four people were critically injured.
The capital was immediately placed under the highest alert status.
The attack took place at a time of heightened fears in France and other European capitals over the fallout from the wars in Iraq and Syria, where hundreds of European citizens have gone to fight alongside the radical Islamic State group.
In a sign of such tensions, a media group’s office in Madrid was evacuated later in the day after a suspicious package was sent there.
One man, who witnessed the attack, described a scene like “in a movie.”
“I saw them leaving and shooting. They were wearing masks. These guys were serious,” said the man who declined to give his name. “At first I thought it was special forces chasing drug traffickers or something.”
An employee at a nearby daycare center said he was walking with children when panic erupted.
“People leaned out of the window and yelled at me to get off the pavement,” he said.
“We got out of there very fast,” said Jean-Paul Chevalier(56). “People were panicking. I heard shooting.”
Wednesday’s shooting is one of the worst attacks in France in decades.
In 1995, a bomb in a commuter train blamed on Algerian extremists exploded at the Saint Michel metro station in Paris, killing eight and wounding 119.
Al-Qaeda inspired gunman Mohamed Merah killed seven people in and around the southern city of Toulouse in 2012. His victims included three French soldiers and four Jews — three children and a rabbi.
The satirical newspaper attacked Wednesday gained notoriety in February 2006 when it reprinted cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that had originally appeared in Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, causing fury across the Muslim world.
