A shooting and hostage situation was underway in a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris. It appears that this new attack is related to the Charlie Hebdo massacre, whose suspects also engaged in a separate standoff with police in a village outside Paris.
Paris supermarket shooting and hostage crisis: what we know and don’t know
Police have stormed both, ending the two hostage crises. The raids have reportedly killed the alleged Charlie Hebdo shooters, as well as one of the supermarket hostage-takers, but the status of a fourth suspected shooter remains uncertain. The status of the hostages remains unconfirmed as well.
What we know
- The incident began with shooting and hostage crisis at a kosher supermarket in Paris, with multiple hostages and wounded at the scene. French police initially confirmed two dead.
- One or both of the shooters are believed to have also killed a policewoman in a separate attack on Thursday in Montrouge, a suburb of Paris.
- Police have named two suspects in the supermarket attack: Hayat Boumedienne and Amedy Coulibaly. The raid reportedly killed Coulibaly, but it remains unclear if Boumedienne was present when the police raided the market; she remains at large.
Hayat Boumeddienne et Amedy Coulibaly #Montrouge #Vincennes Cc @FrDesouche pic.twitter.com/Jzx5Rfqaa7
— Hérisson Dissident ن (@Herissident) January 9, 2015 - This map, via the BBC, shows the location of the supermarket, as well as the Wednesday Charlie Hebdo massacre and the Thursday murder of a policewoman in Montrouge:
(BBC)
- French authorities believe that one of the two suspected hostage-takers, Coulibaly, belonged to the same terrorist recruitment cell as the Charlie Hebdo killers, and that they knew one another.
- Apparently fearing further attacks on Parisian Jews, police have ordered all shops in the city's historic Jewish neighborhood, Le Marais, to close. The area is quite far from the supermarket attack.
- Police launched near-simultaneous raids on the supermarket and on the separate hostage situation outside of Paris. Multiple outlets have reported that, in both cases, the hostage-takers have been killed.
What we don’t know
- It's not clear what the nature of the connection is, if any, between this shooting and the Charlie Hebdo massacre, though initial reports from French authorities suggest a possible link. At one point, the AP quoted a Paris police officer saying that the market gunman is threatening to kill his hostages if the police storm the Charlie Hebdo killers:
French prosecutor's'office confirmed link between the shooter of Monbtrouge and the two shooters responsible for the charlie hebdo shooting
— Richard Engel (@RichardEngel) January 9, 2015BREAKING: Paris police: Market gunman threatens to kill hostages if police storm terrorist brothers.
— The Associated Press (@AP) January 9, 2015 - It's not clear how many were taken hostage or the status of the hostages. The Guardian reports that a witness claimed to have seen at least six hostages, and some reports indicate children among the hostages, but police have not confirmed those numbers.
- Whether this is part of a deliberate, pre-planned wave of attacks coordinated as part of the Charlie Hebdo attack, or an attack of opportunity, or something else entirely.
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