WarSclerotic

French police kill hostage-takers in Paris, but not before four are killed in kosher market – International – Jerusalem Post.

BBC: A 37-year-old woman called her mother from inside the supermarket and told her five people have already been killed.

PARIS – At least four people were killed by a gunman who took hostages in a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris, a police source told Reuters on Friday.

French media reported on Friday that the police raided the kosher supermarket where a gunman took at least five people hostage. A number of hostages were freed in the raid, local press reported.

Almost simultaneously in another part of Paris, the two brothers wanted for the shooting of 12 people at the offices of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo were killed in a raid on Friday by security forces on the print works where they were holed up with a hostage, a government source said.

Le Monde newspaper quoted a police official as saying that the hostage-taker at the kosher supermarket in eastern Paris had also been killed. That hostage-taker is believed to have links to the same Islamist group as the two brothers.

French television images showed some people running out of the supermarket in eastern Paris. The exact fate of all the hostages there and at the one at the print works was not immediately clear.

Minutes earlier, loud explosions were heard near the supermarket and television images showed a large contingent of police storming the building.

The images showed a number of people believed to be the hostages running away from the building as police raided the area, firing their guns.

The crisis began about three hours earlier when an armed man took several hostages and one person was wounded in a shootout at a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris on Friday, police sources confirmed on Friday. There are conflicting reports as to whether there anyone was killed in the incident.

A woman in tears approached French police outside the kosher supermarket where hostages were held captive by a gunman in northeast Paris, saying her 37-year-old daughter just managed to call from the supermarket and told her five people have already been killed, the BBC reported.

The daughter said many hostages were in the basement of the supermarket. The conversation was interrupted by other hostages making the woman stop talking for her own safety.

There is no official confirmation of these claims.

It was not immediately clear whether there was a link between that gunman and the two suspects wanted for 12 killings at the Charlie Hebdo satirical weekly on Wednesday.

However a police source said the hostage-taker resembled the man suspected of killing a policewoman in a southern suburb of Paris on Thursday. That man in turn is believed to be a member of the same jihadist group as the two Charlie Hebdo suspects.

The exact number of hostages taken was unclear. Local media spoke of at least five. The police source said the man was equipped with automatic weapons.

Police immediately cordoned off the area and a helicopter was flying overhead.

French anti-terrorist police stormed a small printing works in northern France where the two chief suspects in Wednesday’s attack on a Paris newspaper had taken a hostage, explosions and gunfire ringing out around the building.

Reuters quoted a police officer at the scene as saying that the two suspects were killed in the standoff.

The building in the small town of Dammartin-en-Goele, set in marsh and woodland, had been under siege since the gunmen abandoned a high-speed car chase and took refuge there early on Friday. A helicopter hovered overhead.

“At the time of speaking, police forces are in the process, I hope, of apprehending the perpetrators of this act of savagery and making sure they can do no more harm,” Prime Minister Manuel Valls said.

No further details of the security forces’ late afternoon operation were immediately available.

Separately, Paris police named a man they were looking for in connection with Thursday’s killing of a policewoman as 32 year-old Amedy Coulibaly. They said were also looking for a 26 year-old woman called Hayat Boumeddiene. They described both as armed and dangerous.

Hezbollah chief says terrorists damage Islam more than cartoons – Breaking News – Jerusalem Post.

( Gives a whole new meaning to “irony.” –  JW )

The leader of the Shi’ite Muslim group Hezbollah said on Friday that Islamist terrorists had done more harm to Islam than any cartoon or book, a reference to the attack by suspected Islamist militants on French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said what he called “takfiri terrorist groups” had insulted Islam more than “even those who have attacked the messenger of God through books depicting the Prophet or making films depicting the Prophet or drawing cartoons of the Prophet.”

Takfiri is a term for a Muslim who accuses others, including another Muslim, of apostasy. Hezbollah considers members of ultra-hardline Sunni-dominated groups like al Qaeda and Islamic State to be takfiris.

Twelve people were killed in the presumed Islamist militant attack on Wednesday at the weekly Charlie Hebdo, which has often lampooned Islam and other religions as well as politicians and other public figures.

Cartoons in Charlie Hebdo have provoked angry reactions from some Muslims. Footage of the killings at the paper’s offices showed gunmen shouting “we have avenged the Prophet Mohammad”.

Nasrallah was speaking to supporters in Beirut’s southern suburbs via video link to commemorate the birthday of the Prophet.

Hezbollah, which Washington describes as a terrorist group, functions as a political party that is part of the Lebanese government. It also has a military wing that has sent hundreds of fighters to support President Bashar Assad’s forces in neighboring Syria.

Accused cop killers threaten to kill hostages in Paris if police move on Islamist massacre suspects | Fox News.

Watch live at: http://cbsn.cbsnews.com/

( 7:20 PM – Ch 2 reporting 4 Jewish hostages dead dead and 4 critically wounded in the  supermarket.  – ברוך דיין האמת – JW )

A pair of suspected cop killers holed up in a Paris kosher supermarket have threatened to kill five hostages if police, who have the jihadist brothers behind Wednesday’s massacre at a Paris satirical magazine surrounded 25 miles north of the city, move in on them.

The fast-moving developments came as nearly 90,000 police and military personnel were deployed to end the terror crisis that has gripped the European nation since late Wednesday morning, when a pair of brothers killed 12 in a bloody, commando-style raid on Charlie Hebdo, a magazine which had angered Muslim radicals by repeatedly publishing images of Prophet Muhammed. Authorities were concerned all four, who are believed to know each other and may be part of a terror cell, were prepared to go out as martyrs.

“Even though these guys are a bunch of savages, the negotiators are going to be trying to calm things down … the less volatile things are, the safer it is for everybody,” James Alvarez, who has worked as a consultant for Scotland Yard and the New York Police Department, told Sky News as the dueling situations unfolded.

“France has been struck directly in the heart of its capital, in a place where the spirit of liberty — and thus of resistance — breathed freely.”- French President Francois Hollande

The hostage takers at Hypercacher (Hyper Kosher), a Jewish supermarket in eastern Paris, were identified by police as Amedy Coulibaly and Hayat Boumeddiene, a couple suspected in the murder Thursday of Paris Police Officer Clarissa Jean-Philippe as she attended to a routine traffic accident in the city. Reports said they were holding as many as five hostages, including women and children, and that two people had been shot. Reports that two shooting victims had died could not be confirmed.

The attack came hours before the Jewish sabbath, as the store was likely at its busiest point of the week.

Coulibaly, 33, and Cherif Kouachi, one of the brothers suspected in Wednesday’s massacre, were committed followers of convicted terror kingpin Djamel Beghal, according to Le Monde. Boumeddiene, 26, has been Coulibaly’s girlfriend since 2010 and lived in his home while he was serving a prison sentence, Le Monde said. ​

Cherif and Said Kouachi, the Islamist brothers suspected in the attack on Charlie Hebdo were holding at least one hostage inside a printing house in Dammartin-en-Goele, a small industrial town 25 miles outside the capital, surrounded by police and believed to be in touch with hostage negotiators. The suspects reportedly told police negotiators they were ready to “die as martyrs.”

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Police identified Hayat Boumeddiene and Amedy Coulibaly as the suspects in a second hostage situation unfolding in Paris.

Christelle Alleume, who works across the street from the printing plant, said that a round of gunfire interrupted her coffee break Friday morning.

“We heard shots and we returned very fast because everyone was afraid,” she told i-Tele. “We had orders to turn off the lights and not approach the windows.

Officials told Fox News that there were four people inside the business when the gunmen went inside, but three people were somehow able to leave the area.

The Associated Press reported that at least three helicopters were seen hovering above the town. At nearby Charles de Gaulle airport, two runways were briefly closed to arrivals to avoid interfering in the standoff, but were later reopened. Schools went into lockdown.

Earlier Friday, a French security official told the AP that shots were fired as the suspects stole a car in the town of Montagny Sainte Felicite in the early morning hours. French officials told Fox News that the suspects threw the car’s driver out at the side of the road. The driver, who recognized the suspects, then called police and alerted them to the suspects’ whereabouts.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said that 88,000 security forces were mobilized in the manhunt that ultimately pinned the brothers in the printing facility, where they fled after being spotted near a vast forest. As the manhunt unfolded, details about the brothers, who left their IDs in a getaway car recovered by police, emerged, painting a picture of homegrown radicals who likely had terror training in the Middle East.

On Thursday, U.S. government sources confirmed that Said Kouachi had traveled to Yemen in 2011 and had direct contact with an Al Qaeda training camp. The other brother, Cherif, had been convicted in France of terrorism charges in 2008 for trying to join up with fighters battling in Iraq. The sources also confirmed that both brothers were on a U.S. no-fly list.

Fox News was told the investigators have made it a priority to determine whether he had contact with Al Qaeda in Yemen’s leadership, including a bomb maker and a former Guantanamo Bay detainee.

French President Francois Hollande called for tolerance after the country’s worst terrorist attack since 1961, in the middle of the conflict over Algerian independence from France.

“France has been struck directly in the heart of its capital, in a place where the spirit of liberty — and thus of resistance — breathed freely,” Hollande said.

Charlie Hebdo had long drawn threats for its depictions of Islam, although it also satirized other religions and political figures. The weekly paper had caricatured the Prophet Muhammad, and a sketch of Islamic State’s leader was the last tweet sent out by the irreverent newspaper, minutes before the attack. Nothing has been tweeted since.

Eight journalists, two police officers, a maintenance worker and a visitor were killed in the attack.

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A pair of jihadists is believed to be holding two hostages in this Jewish grocery store.

Charlie Hebdo planned a special edition next week, produced in the offices of another paper.

Editor Stephane Charbonnier, known as Charb, who was among those slain, “symbolized secularism … the combat against fundamentalism,” his companion, Jeannette Bougrab, said on BFM-TV.

“He was ready to die for his ideas,” she said.

Authorities around Europe have warned of the threat posed by the return of Western jihadis trained in warfare. France counts at least 1,200 citizens in the war zone in Syria — headed there, returned or dead. Both the Islamic State group and Al Qaeda have threatened France — home to Western Europe’s largest Muslim population.

The French suspect in a deadly 2014 attack on a Jewish museum in Belgium had returned from fighting with extremists in Syria; and the man who rampaged in southern France in 2012, killing three soldiers and four people at a Jewish school, received paramilitary training in Pakistan.

Fox News’ Greg Palkot, Catherine Herridge and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Europe Is Under Siege – The Atlantic.

The Muslim occupation of Europe – Israel Opinion, Ynetnews.

Op-ed: Paris attack should become a milestone in the war against Muslim terror; but it won’t, because the Western world is not physically or mentally prepared to fight the enemies rising up to destroy it.

France will hesitate on the day after the attack against satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, and its leaders will say a few words of grief and threaten the Muslim world. The French police will continue searching for the three terrorists who murdered a dozen people in the heart of Paris on Wednesday.

But France will not say out loud what millions in Europe are thinking in their hearts: It’s either them, the Muslims, or us, the Europeans (most of whom are Christian Catholic).

The Muslim empire struck again on Wednesday, and it will strike the European community, which it envies, again and again. Millions of Muslims have already occupied a significant part of Europe’s countries a long time ago.

The Muslim invasion of the continent requires every European politician to consider the many voices of the Muslim population. Even a European politician who despises the Muslims, their religion and their lifestyle would be unwilling to risk making harsh comments, although he is expected to make them, at least today.

The Muslims didn’t just murder 12 people on Wednesday, but a cultural movement which has developed in France since the student revolt in 1968 and has captured many hearts. Even those who do not belong to the left became fond of the anarchistic, uninhibited style of the popular weekly newspaper.

Solidarity rally in Paris. ‘France will not say out loud what millions in Europe are thinking in their hearts: It’s either them, the Muslims, or us, the Europeans’ (Photo: AFP)

The murder which took place in Paris on Wednesday should become a milestone in the war against Muslim terror. It won’t, because the Western world is not physically or mentally prepared to fight the enemies rising up to destroy it.

The Europeans, like the Americans and even like the Israelis, have failed to get to the bottom of the meaning of the Islamic occupation and did not prepare the tools for a war against it when they should have.

Now everyone will ask everyone what to do and will not find the answer. But the answer is clear to everyone, only no one is ready or wants to use it: It’s either us – the Europeans, the Israelis and all those who support freedom and democracy – or them, the Muslims.

The murder of the 12 French people on Wednesday is not even the foreword of the preface of the introduction for them. This doesn’t mean, God forbid, that the overwhelming majority of Muslims support murderers. The opposite may be true.

But if they are not destroyed while they are still small and while they are still few of them, we will soon face a new and horribly brutal world.