Teh One Who Knocks
01-08-2015, 12:40 PM
By Peter Allen In Paris for MailOnline
http://i.imgur.com/4acHuyy.jpg
A female police officer has been shot dead and a street cleaner left injured in the second attack to hit Paris in less than 24 hours.
The officer, who has not been named, died this morning following the shooting in Montrouge, in the south of the city.
The street cleaner was also hurt in the attack.
Both had been described by a police source as being in a 'very serious condition' after the shooting, which is not known if it's linked to the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo offices on Wednesday.
That massacre claimed 12 lives, including those of two police officers.
Today shots rang out in Montrouge at the start of the morning rush hour, with an M5 assault rifle believed to have been used.
France's top security official Bernard Cazenueve said the officer had stopped to investigate a traffic accident when the firing started.
'There was an officer in front of a white car and a man running away who shot,' said Ahmed Sassi, who saw the shooting from his home nearby.
He said the shooter wore dark clothes but no mask.
'It didn't look like a big gun because he held it with one hand,' Sassi said.
William Thomas, a 19-year-old who lives close to this morning's attack, said: 'I was woken up by the first three shots.
'Then I heard someone shout "Take that" and there were another two shots. It was before 8am.'
The automatic gunfire was followed by the arrival of numerous special operations police, accompanied by emergency services.
A man who appeared to be of North African origin was seen running away from the scene. He was thought to be wearing a bullet proof vest.
'Emergency workers tried to revive the woman officer at the scene but she was in a very bad way,' an officer at the scene had said earlier.
The second suspect drove away in white Renault Clio. One of the men was arrested, said a local police spokesman. He was described as a 53-year-old.
Cazeneuve - who visited the scene - says the attacker in the shooting Thursday remained at large.
French officials confirmed the female officer died this morning, bringing to three the number of officers killed in the French capital in the last 24 hours.
Two officers were killed in the Charlie Hebdo massacre: Ahmed Merabet, 42, and Franck Brinsolaro, 49.
Meanwhile, police are understood to be closing in on the two 'armed and dangerous' brothers who carried out yesterday's attack at the offices of Charlie Hebdo.
Cherif and Said Kouachi are thought to have been located in northern France.
A petrol station attendant was said to have identified the men, who were driving a white Renault Clio in the direction of Paris 'with exposed Kalashnikovs and rocket launchers' inside the vehicle, a source told RTL.
Detectives identified the Kouachis after one left his identification papers in the abandoned Citroen car used to escape after the attack on Charlie Hebdo.
Their alleged getaway driver Hamyd Mourad, 18, turned himself into police in Charleville-Mezieres in northern France.
A French police source said Mourad, a student, was encouraged to hand himself in by relatives after his name appeared on social media as a suspect for the killings.
He is believed to be the Kouachis' brother-in-law, according to Sky News. Today he was under armed guard and being questioned by police.
Operations by RAID, the police tactical unit, closed on an address in Reims, eastern France, overnight but it came to nothing, he added.
The Kouachi brothers also had links with the Paris suburb of Pantin, where another raid took place on a suspected flat which they used as hide out on Avenue Jean-Lolive.
All three French-Algerian Muslims escaped on Wednesday following the bloodbath at the offices of the notoriously anti-Islamic satirical magazine in Paris.
Twelve were killed - including the magazine's publishing director Stephane Charbonnier - known as ''Charb' - and three of its best-known cartoonists.
Both Said, 34, and his brother Cherif, 33, were first arrested in 2005 as suspected members of the Buttes Chaumont – a group operating out of the 19th arrondissement of Paris and sending terrorist fighters to Iraq.
Cherif was convicted in 2008 to three years in prison, with 18 months suspended, for his association with the underground organisation.
He had wanted to fly to Iraq via Syria, and was found with a manual for a Kalashnikov – the automatic weapon used in Wednesday's attack.
After his short prison sentence, Cherif was in 2010 linked with a plot to free Smain Ait Ali Belkacem, the mastermind of the 1995 bombing of the St Michel metro station in Paris that killed eight people and wounded more than 100 more.
Belkacem was a leading members of the GIA, or Armed Islamic Army – an Algerian terror outfit responsible for numerous atrocities.
Said and Cherif, both orphans, were born in Paris but grew up in foster care in Renne, Brittany.
They returned to Paris aged 18, when they moved to a council estate in Paris's 19th arrondissement. During this time Cherif was arrested for both drug dealing and theft.
With no direction or aspirations, the pair were quickly taken in by a gang known as Buttes-Chaumont, run by two Imams from northern Paris, one of whom was Farid Benyettou, a janitor-turned-preacher.
Louis Caprioli, former deputy director of the anti-terror unit at the French intelligence agency, described the gang as 'young hoodlums who became radical. They organised a network to get people to Iraq,' according to The Times .
The brothers were known to have been radicalised some time around 2003 after the second Iraq War, apparently infuriated by Western troops and jets killing Arabic soldiers.
They were arrested over their connection to the gang in 2005 amid rumours they were training to go to Iraq, though in reality all this involved was a daily jog.
Cherif's lawyer presented him in court as a man taken in by people 'who gave him the feeling of being important.'
Around this time he appeared on a French TV programme, apparently repenting for his crimes, and saying he had now become a rapper.
Footage, believed to be taken in 2007, shows Cherif wearing a cap, sunglasses, and performing music while dancing on stage alongside other artists.
However by 2008 he was back working as a fishmonger, and was again arrested trying to board a plane to Damascus while carrying an instruction manual on how to operate a Kalashnikov rifle, one of the weapons used in yesterday's attack.
http://i.imgur.com/4acHuyy.jpg
A female police officer has been shot dead and a street cleaner left injured in the second attack to hit Paris in less than 24 hours.
The officer, who has not been named, died this morning following the shooting in Montrouge, in the south of the city.
The street cleaner was also hurt in the attack.
Both had been described by a police source as being in a 'very serious condition' after the shooting, which is not known if it's linked to the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo offices on Wednesday.
That massacre claimed 12 lives, including those of two police officers.
Today shots rang out in Montrouge at the start of the morning rush hour, with an M5 assault rifle believed to have been used.
France's top security official Bernard Cazenueve said the officer had stopped to investigate a traffic accident when the firing started.
'There was an officer in front of a white car and a man running away who shot,' said Ahmed Sassi, who saw the shooting from his home nearby.
He said the shooter wore dark clothes but no mask.
'It didn't look like a big gun because he held it with one hand,' Sassi said.
William Thomas, a 19-year-old who lives close to this morning's attack, said: 'I was woken up by the first three shots.
'Then I heard someone shout "Take that" and there were another two shots. It was before 8am.'
The automatic gunfire was followed by the arrival of numerous special operations police, accompanied by emergency services.
A man who appeared to be of North African origin was seen running away from the scene. He was thought to be wearing a bullet proof vest.
'Emergency workers tried to revive the woman officer at the scene but she was in a very bad way,' an officer at the scene had said earlier.
The second suspect drove away in white Renault Clio. One of the men was arrested, said a local police spokesman. He was described as a 53-year-old.
Cazeneuve - who visited the scene - says the attacker in the shooting Thursday remained at large.
French officials confirmed the female officer died this morning, bringing to three the number of officers killed in the French capital in the last 24 hours.
Two officers were killed in the Charlie Hebdo massacre: Ahmed Merabet, 42, and Franck Brinsolaro, 49.
Meanwhile, police are understood to be closing in on the two 'armed and dangerous' brothers who carried out yesterday's attack at the offices of Charlie Hebdo.
Cherif and Said Kouachi are thought to have been located in northern France.
A petrol station attendant was said to have identified the men, who were driving a white Renault Clio in the direction of Paris 'with exposed Kalashnikovs and rocket launchers' inside the vehicle, a source told RTL.
Detectives identified the Kouachis after one left his identification papers in the abandoned Citroen car used to escape after the attack on Charlie Hebdo.
Their alleged getaway driver Hamyd Mourad, 18, turned himself into police in Charleville-Mezieres in northern France.
A French police source said Mourad, a student, was encouraged to hand himself in by relatives after his name appeared on social media as a suspect for the killings.
He is believed to be the Kouachis' brother-in-law, according to Sky News. Today he was under armed guard and being questioned by police.
Operations by RAID, the police tactical unit, closed on an address in Reims, eastern France, overnight but it came to nothing, he added.
The Kouachi brothers also had links with the Paris suburb of Pantin, where another raid took place on a suspected flat which they used as hide out on Avenue Jean-Lolive.
All three French-Algerian Muslims escaped on Wednesday following the bloodbath at the offices of the notoriously anti-Islamic satirical magazine in Paris.
Twelve were killed - including the magazine's publishing director Stephane Charbonnier - known as ''Charb' - and three of its best-known cartoonists.
Both Said, 34, and his brother Cherif, 33, were first arrested in 2005 as suspected members of the Buttes Chaumont – a group operating out of the 19th arrondissement of Paris and sending terrorist fighters to Iraq.
Cherif was convicted in 2008 to three years in prison, with 18 months suspended, for his association with the underground organisation.
He had wanted to fly to Iraq via Syria, and was found with a manual for a Kalashnikov – the automatic weapon used in Wednesday's attack.
After his short prison sentence, Cherif was in 2010 linked with a plot to free Smain Ait Ali Belkacem, the mastermind of the 1995 bombing of the St Michel metro station in Paris that killed eight people and wounded more than 100 more.
Belkacem was a leading members of the GIA, or Armed Islamic Army – an Algerian terror outfit responsible for numerous atrocities.
Said and Cherif, both orphans, were born in Paris but grew up in foster care in Renne, Brittany.
They returned to Paris aged 18, when they moved to a council estate in Paris's 19th arrondissement. During this time Cherif was arrested for both drug dealing and theft.
With no direction or aspirations, the pair were quickly taken in by a gang known as Buttes-Chaumont, run by two Imams from northern Paris, one of whom was Farid Benyettou, a janitor-turned-preacher.
Louis Caprioli, former deputy director of the anti-terror unit at the French intelligence agency, described the gang as 'young hoodlums who became radical. They organised a network to get people to Iraq,' according to The Times .
The brothers were known to have been radicalised some time around 2003 after the second Iraq War, apparently infuriated by Western troops and jets killing Arabic soldiers.
They were arrested over their connection to the gang in 2005 amid rumours they were training to go to Iraq, though in reality all this involved was a daily jog.
Cherif's lawyer presented him in court as a man taken in by people 'who gave him the feeling of being important.'
Around this time he appeared on a French TV programme, apparently repenting for his crimes, and saying he had now become a rapper.
Footage, believed to be taken in 2007, shows Cherif wearing a cap, sunglasses, and performing music while dancing on stage alongside other artists.
However by 2008 he was back working as a fishmonger, and was again arrested trying to board a plane to Damascus while carrying an instruction manual on how to operate a Kalashnikov rifle, one of the weapons used in yesterday's attack.