Black-clad gunmen shouting "Allahu Akbar!" stormed the Paris offices of a satirical publication known for lampooning Islam Wednesday, killing 12, including its editor, three political cartoonists and a police officer whose cold-blooded murder at close range was captured on a disturbing video.
The masked, Kalashnikov-toting shooters moved with military precision, and then escaped following the 11:30 a.m. attack at Charlie Hebdo, the publication known for challenging Muslim terrorists with a 2011 caricature of Prophet Muhammed on its cover and which recently tweeted a cartoon of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and were being sought.
French police late Wednesday identified the three and said one had been convicted of terrorism charges in 2008.
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French authorities on Wednesday night released mugshots of two of the suspects in the deadly attack on a French satirical magazine in Paris: Cherif Kouachi, left, and Said Kouachi, right. (Judicial Police of Paris)
Two officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, named the suspects to the Associated Press as Frenchmen Said Kouachi and Cherif Kouachi, in their early 30s, as well as 18-year-old Hamyd Mourad, whose nationality wasn't immediately clear.
One of the officials said they were linked to a Yemeni terrorist network.
All three remain at large.
Cherif Kouachi was convicted in 2008 of terrorism charges for helping funnel fighters to Iraq's insurgency and sentenced to 18 months in prison.
“We’ve avenged the honor of the prophet!” the killers shouted, according to witnesses who spoke to Sky News. Other witnesses said the men shouted "Allahu Akbar," Arabic for "God is great." The gunmen spoke French without any accent, according to Le Monde.
As the killers fled to a waiting getaway car driven by a third suspect, they shot at arriving policemen. Video, believed to be cellphone footage, quickly emerged of the killers men getting out of a car and shooting a prone police officer in the head in cold blood as he begged for his life on the sidewalk. After killing him, they jumped back in the car and resumed their flight.
“We’ve avenged the honor of the prophet!”- Gunmen who stormed Paris satirical newspaper
French President Francois Hollande branded the attack an act of terrorism and claimed that several other potential terror attacks had been thwarted "in recent weeks." Hollande added that the publication had been threatened in the past and was already under police protection and surveillance.
“This is a terrorist attack, there is no doubt about it,” Hollande told reporters.
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French cartoonist Stephane Charbonnier, publishing director of French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, in a photo from 2012. He was reportedly killed in the attack.
Officials said the men walked into the ground floor of the publication's offices and began shooting before making their way up to the first floor. Cartoonist Corine Rey, aka “Coco,” told the weekly Humanité that she let the men inside the building of Charlie Hebdo after being ordered at gunpoint.
“They spoke perfect French," said Rey, who said the rampage lased about five minutes. "They said they were Al Qaeda.”
Witnesses said the attack was carried out commando-style, with the gunmen demanding the names of those they encountered, indicating that they had specific targets in mind.
“It was a real butchery,” Rocco Contento, a spokesman for the Unité police union, told The Guardian.
Benoit Bringer, a journalist from the agency Premieres Lignes Tele, whose offices are next door, told the Telegraph he took refuge on the building's roof.
"Three policemen arrived by push bike, but they left naturally as the attackers were armed," he said.
The publication's offices are in the trendy 11th arrondissement of Paris, which includes posh restaurants and retail shops. It is one of the most densely populated districts in all of Europe and is home to a large, mostly Algerian, Muslim community. Schools in the area were closed and newspaper offices, shopping centers, museums and stations were placed under police protection.
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The video still image shows the blurred-out image of a Paris police officer being shot by the fleeing gunmen. (Sky News)
Charlie Hebdo first gained notoriety in 2006, when it reprinted a dozen cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that appeared in Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, in defiance of Islam's forbidding of any image attempting to portray its most important prophet. Itsoffices were firebombed in 2011 after a spoof issue featuring a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad on its cover. Nearly a year later, the magazine published crude Muhammad caricatures, drawing denunciations around the Muslim world. One of the dead in Wednesday's attack was satirical cartoonist Stephane Charbonnier, the publication's editorial director and the artist behind the caricatures that offended jihadists. He was the subject of a fatwah, and there is a Facebook page called "Execute Stephane Charbonnier."
In a 2012 interview, Charbonnier famously shrugged off the threats on his life.
“I would rather die standing than live on my knees,” he said.
Charlie Hebdo’s editor-in-chief, Gérard Biard, escaped the attack because he was in London. He expressed his shock and said the magazine had had no specific threats of violence.
Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre, spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor, told The Associated Press another cartoonist named Jean Cabut, known by the pen name Cabu was killed. Other reports said cartoonists Georges Wolinski and Bernard 'Tignous' Verlhac were killed.
A police official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation, said one of the two police officers killed was one assigned as Charbonnier's bodyguard after prior death threats against him.
Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who has faced death threats after several newspapers published his images of Muhammad, recently presented Charlie Hebdo with his "Gold Dog" prize, said the attack, in spite of security for Charlie Hebdo staffers, shows it is "impossible to guard [them] when it comes to attackers armed to the teeth."
"The publication [of the Muhammed cartoons] happened a few years back in time and one could imagine that it would have been forgotten, but it is not," he told Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. "There are obviously people who take their time and wait for the right moment."
President Obama condemned the attack and vowed to help France bring the killers to justice.
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Injured person is packed into ambulance after terror attack at the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
"France is America's oldest ally, and has stood shoulder to shoulder with the United States in the fight against terrorists who threaten our shared security and the world," Obama said in a statement. "Time and again, the French people have stood up for the universal values that generations of our people have defended. France, and the great city of Paris where this outrageous attack took place, offer the world a timeless example that will endure well beyond the hateful vision of these killers. We are in touch with French officials and I have directed my Administration to provide any assistance needed to help bring these terrorists to justice."
British Prime Minister David Cameron also condemned the attack and vowed solidarity with France.
"The murders in Paris are sickening," Cameron said. "We stand with the French people in the fight against terror and defending the freedom of the press."
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