PARIS - A BBC News Special Report - With explosions and gunfire, security forces Friday ended three days of terror around Paris, killing the two al-Qaida-linked brothers who staged a murderous rampage at a satirical newspaper and an accomplice who seized hostages at a kosher supermarket to try to help the brothers escape. The worst terrorist violence France has seen in decades killed at least 20 people, including the three gunmen. A fourth suspect, the common law wife of the market attacker, was still at large and believed to be armed. Al-Qaida's branch in Yemen said it directed the attack against the publication Charlie Hebdo to avenge the honor of the Prophet Muhammad, a frequent target of the weekly's satire. The brothers were not unknown to authorities. One had a terrorism-related conviction for ties to a network sending fighters to battle American forces in Iraq, and both were on the U.S. no-fly list, according to a U.S. official. President Francois Hollande urged his nation to remain united and vigilant, and the city shut down a famed Jewish neighborhood amid fears of more violence. The drama, which played out on live TV and social media, began with the brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi methodically massacring 12 people Wednesday at the Charlie Hebdo offices, stopping to shoot a wounded police officer in the head before escaping by car. On Thursday, a gunman police identified as Amedy Coulibaly shot a policewoman to death south of Paris, although authorities were not sure at first if it was related to the Charlie Hebdo shootings. It all ended at dusk Friday with near-simultaneous raids in two locations: a printing plant in the town of Dammartin-en-Goele, northeast of Paris, where the Kouachis were holed up, and the Paris supermarket where Coulibaly killed four hostages and threatened more violence unless the police let the Kouachis go free. As scores of black-clad security forces surrounded both sites, booming explosions, heavy gunfire and dense smoke heralded the news that the twin sieges finally had ended. The three gunmen were dead, but the authorities also discovered four dead hostages at the market. Sixteen hostages were freed, one from the printing plant and 15 others from the store. The attackers had ties both to each other and to terrorist activities that reached back years and extended from Paris to al-Qaida in Yemen. They epitomized Western authorities' greatest fear, Islamic radicals who trained abroad and came home to stage attacks. After the killings at the Charlie Hebdo offices, Cherif Kouachi, 32, and his 34-year-old brother Said led police on a chase around northeastern France, robbing a gas station and stealing a car before ending up at the printing plant in Dammartin-en-Goele, near Charles de Gaulle airport. One of the brothers was wounded in the neck at one point during a shootout with police after he commandeered a car, Paris Prosecutor Francois Molins said. A member of the al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula gave a statement in English to The Associated Press saying the group's leadership "directed the operations and they have chosen their target carefully."

• published: 10 Jan 2015
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