08 January 2015

Charlie Hebdo suspects rob service station


The BBC has an article, with a video by Damian Grammaticas, about terrorists going downmarket:
The two main suspects in the Islamist attack on the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris are said to have robbed a service station (photo, top) in the north of France.
Anti-terrorism police have converged on an area near Villers-Cotterets where the gunmen were reported by French media to have stolen food and petrol.
France has observed a minute's silence for the twelve people killed at the office of the satirical magazine. Earlier, a gunman shot dead a policewoman south of Paris and fled.
It is unclear if the attack in Montrouge, in which a second person was seriously injured, was linked to the Charlie Hebdo shooting, but French prosecutors say they are treating it as a "terrorist act", the AFP reports.
The manager of the service station that was robbed, in the Aisne region, said the attackers fit the description of the two men, and were heavily armed with Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
The two prime suspects, Cherif and Said Kouachi (photos, above), are said to have driven off in a Renault Clio car, apparently the same vehicle hijacked in Paris soon after the attack at Charlie Hebdo.
The highest security alert has been imposed in the Picardy region, where police are searching for both men, officials say. Police have blocked a road running between the N2 road and the village of Longpont, where a witness says officers have been making house-to-house inquiries. According to French commercial channel BFMTV, police are monitoring all of the main entry roads into the capital.
A third man who was initially sought turned himself in to police in the eastern city of Charleville-Meziere late on Wednesday. It is not yet clear if he is regarded as a suspect. 
At the scene: Chris Morris, Europe correspondent:
Several locations in Paris held a minute's silence for the victims of the attack. There is obviously a sense of unease in Paris, with another fatal armed attack so soon after the murders at Charlie Hebdo. But most people are also going about their daily business, sending the message that life goes on.
On this day of national mourning, though, with church bells ringing throughout the land, there has been no time for reflection for the police and security services. The fear is of further copycat attacks, or that those already involved could try to strike again.
For now, that is the focus of official efforts; a huge manhunt is under way, with the police hoping that they may be closing in on the two leading suspects in the Aisne region, north-east of Paris.
Security has also been increased at public places to try to provide extra reassurance. Calls for calm, and above all for unity, will continue to be heard.
Meanwhile, the lawyer for Charlie Hebdo, Richard Malka, confirmed that next week's edition of the magazine would go ahead and would have a print run of a million, instead of the normal sixty thousand copies.
The gunman involved in the separate attack in Montrouge was reportedly armed with a machine-gun and a pistol and wore a bullet-proof jacket. A local resident, Ahmed Sassi, said he saw a man dressed in dark clothes run up and shoot the female police officer "at point blank range".
Five of the victims known to have died in the attack included deputy chief editor Bernard Maris, Georges Wolinsky, Jean Cabut, Stephane Charbonnier, and Bernard Verlhac.
Seven people believed to be connected to the Kouachi brothers have been detained in the towns of Reims and Charleville-Mezieres, as well as in the Paris area.
Cherif Kouachi was sentenced in 2008 to three years in prison for belonging to a Paris-based group sending jihadi fighters to Iraq.
Since the shootings, there appear to have been a number of revenge attacks on Muslims reported by French media, though nobody was hurt: two shots were fired at a Muslim prayer room in the town of Port-la-Nouvelle in the southern region of Aude on Wednesday evening, and a Muslim family was shot at in their car in Caromb, in the southern region of Vaucluse.
Dummy grenades were thrown during the night at a mosque in Le Mans, in western France. The slogan Death to Arabs was daubed on the door of a mosque in Poitiers, in central France, during the night, and a blast hit a kebab shop beside a mosque in Villefranche-sur-Saone in central France.
Rico says you can't, regrettably, kill 'em all...

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