UPDATED-Niger protesters burn churches in second day of Charlie riots

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Paris (AFP) - Heavily armed gunmen shouting Islamist slogans stormed a Paris satirical newspaper office Wednesday and shot dead at least 12 people in the deadliest attack in France in four decades.

Police launched a massive manhunt for the masked attackers who reportedly hijacked a car and sped off, running over a pedestrian and shooting at officers.

Police said witnesses heard the attackers, who were armed with a Kalashnikov and rocket launcher, shout "we have avenged the prophet" and "Allahu akbar" (God is greatest).

Two police were confirmed among the dead and four people were critically injured.

The capital was placed under the highest alert status after the attack on Charlie Hebdo, a satirical weekly that has sparked anger in the past among Muslims for publishing cartoons of the prophet Mohamed.

Television footage showed large numbers of police in the area, bullet-riddled windows and people being carried away on stretchers.

The attack took place at a time of heightened fears in France and other European capitals over fallout from the wars in Iraq and Syria where hundreds of European citizens have gone to fight alongside the radical Islamic State group.

President Francois Hollande, who immediately rushed to the scene of the shooting, described it as a barbaric terrorist attack.

"An act of exceptional barbarism has just been committed here in Paris against a newspaper, meaning (against) the expression of liberty," Hollande said at the scene.

One man who witnessed the shooting said he saw two attackers shooting their way out of Charlie Hebdo at around 11:30 am (1030GMT).

"I saw them leaving and shooting. They were wearing masks. These guys were serious," said the man who declined to give his name.

"At first I thought it was special forces chasing drug traffickers or something. We weren't expecting this. You would think we were in a movie."

Hollande called for "national unity", adding that "several terrorist attacks had been foiled in recent weeks".

The White House condemned the attack in the "strongest possible terms," while British Prime Minister David Cameron called it "sickening."

"We stand with the French people in the fight against terror and defending the freedom of the press," Cameron said in a message on Twitter.

Wednesday's shooting is one of the worst attacks in France in decades.

In 1995, a bomb in a commuter train attributed to Algerian extremists exploded at the Saint Michel metro station in Paris, killing eight and wounding 119.

- Death threats -

The satirical newspaper gained notoriety in February 2006 when it reprinted cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that had originally appeared in Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, causing fury across the Muslim world.

Its offices were fire-bombed in November 2011 when it published a cartoon of Mohammed and under the title "Charia Hebdo".

Despite being taken to court under anti-racism laws, the weekly continued to publish controversial cartoons of the Muslim prophet.

In September 2012 Charlie Hebdo published cartoons of a naked Mohammed as violent protests were taking place in several countries over a low-budget film, titled "Innocence of Muslims", which was made in the United States and insulted the prophet.

French schools, consulates and cultural centres in 20 Muslim countries were briefly closed along with embassies for fear of retaliatory attacks at the time.

Editor Stephane Charbonnier has received death threats and lives under police protection.

This week's front page featured controversial French author Michel Houellebecq, whose latest book "Soumission", or "Submission," which imagines a France in the near future that is ruled by an Islamic government, came out Wednesday.

The book has widely been touted as tapping into growing unease among non-Muslim French about immigration and the rise of Islamic influence in society.

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I am French and have been in a daze for the past 8 hours.

class="headline" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1420661699095_514" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 35px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 300; line-height: 42px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 0px; padding-top: 15px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-right: 40px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"Young mother let terrorists into Charlie Hebdo building after threat against daughter
Corinne Rey, cartoonist at Charlie Hebdo

Masked terrorists entered the office building in Paris where they murdered 12 people Wednesday by threatening a young mother and her daughter, she said.

Corinne Rey, a cartoonist for the weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo, says she was forced to enter the security code after returning from picking up her child at daycare, according to a local report.
“I just went to get my daughter from daycare. As I got to the front door of the building, two masked, armed gunmen brutally threatened us,” she told L'Humanité. “They wanted to enter, go up. I typed the code.”
Rey, who goes by “Coco,” said she hid under a desk while the gunmen shot and killed a dozen staffers inside the office.
While crouched down on the ground, she saw the men kill fellow cartoonists Georges Wolinski and Jean Cabut, the French paper reported.
"They shot Wolinski and Cabut," she said. "It lasted five minutes.”
The terrorists, claiming to be with al-Qaida, spoke fluent, unaccented French, according to Rey. 
The Charlie Hebdo newspaper regularly satirizes religious and political figures.
Terrorists have threatened the publication’s staff with violence numerous times for its depictions of Islam and the Prophet Muhammad.
Its offices were firebombed in 2011 after an issue featured a caricature of the prophet on its cover, the Associated Press reported.
Undeterred, Charlie Hebdo published another illustration of Muhammad a year later and a cartoon titled “Still No Attacks in France” featuring a jihadist this week.
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Does France have any treason laws that apply to this?

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A major police operation is under way in France as prosecutors confirmed the second terror attack in the capital in as many days.

Several armed officers were at the scene of a fatal shooting this morning in the south of Paris.

A female police officer, reportedly 25, was killed after she was called to reports of a traffic accident involving a grey Clio at around 7.15am.

A street sweeper was critically injured in the shooting, which is now being treated as a "terrorist act" by the French authorities.

Sky's Crime Correspondent Martin Brunt said police with heavy armour were seen in Porte de Chatillon shortly afterwards and TV news crews were being pushed back from the area, which was sealed off with tape.

Meanwhile, officers are still hunting for suspects in the deadly gun attack on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Two men matching their description are said to have robbed a petrol station about an hour's drive northeast of Paris .

Footage of police activity in the village of Crepy-en-Valois, 10 miles (16km) from that scene, is now emerging.

With the country now on its highest terror alert, hundreds of extra officers have been deployed to guard media offices, places of worship and other areas deemed at risk in the capital.

Some 200 soldiers from parachute regiments across the country have been drafted in to Paris, bringing the number of military patrolling the streets to 850.

In today's attack, which is not being linked by officials to yesterday's shootings, a man wearing a bullet-proof vest fired at the council worker and police woman, who became the third officer to be killed in the capital in 24 hours.

Witness Ahmed Sassi said: "There was an officer in front of a white car and a man running away who shot."

TV channel iTele said both victims of the shooting were seen lying on the ground.

Le Parisien newspaper reported that one of the shooters ran towards the Metro station Chatillon-Montrouge. The other is reported to have fled by car and is still on the run.

AFP news agency reported that a 53-year-old suspect has been detained.

Brunt said: "It's difficult to believe there's no link (to the Charlie Hebdo shootings).

"Maybe it is a copycat, but maybe it is not related."

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said authorities were doing their best to identify and arrest the attacker, and he urged people not to jump to conclusions about any link to the Charlie Hebdo attack.

The officers were gathering in Porte de Chatillon as a minute's silence was held across Francein a mark of respect for the victims of yesterday's violence.

Other attacks have also been reported today - including a "criminal" explosion at a kebab shop near a mosque in eastern France.

Overnight, two Muslim places of worship - in Le Mans, west of Paris, and Port-la-Nouvelle, in southern France - were targeted by blank grenades and gunfire respectively. No casualties were reported.

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Anti-terror police are searching dense woodland northeast of Paris after two gunmen suspected of killing 12 people in the Charlie Hebdo magazine attack were sighted.

Two men reportedly fitting the descriptions of brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi stole fuel and food from a petrol station near Villers-Cotterets, in the northern Aisne region, 43 miles (70km) from Paris, this morning.

Heavily-armed police have finished searching the village of Crepy-en-Valois, 10 miles (16km) from the petrol station.

They are now focusing on a stretch of countryside spanning from Soissons through Abbaye de Longpont right up to Villers-Cotteret.

Sky's Joey Jones said officers were going house-to-house "scrutinising each resident".

Witness Benoit Verdun told Sky News he believes the suspects are in a very large forest near Longpont, which he said is "bigger than Paris" at 13,000 hectares, or 50 square miles.

Crepy-en-Valois' mayor Bruno Fortier said he could not confirm reports the men were holed up in a house in the area.

"It's an incessant waltz of police cars and trucks," he told Reuters.

Jones said the picture is one of "utter confusion" and there are many rumours flying around. 

Earlier the men, wearing balaclavas, were spotted travelling on the N2 road in the direction of Paris in a Renault Clio which had weapons on its back seat and its number plates covered.

AFP said the pair had Kalashnikovs and what appeared to be a rocket-launcher.

RAID, the French anti-terrorist unit, and GIGN, a paramilitary special operations unit, have been deployed in the region.

But Jones said it would appear the suspects are "a step or two ahead" of authorities at the moment.

He added: "The indications at the moment suggest that they (police) are finding it difficult to get a grip on this fast-moving situation.

"Each time we arrive at an area where they have been sighted or there is some sort of suspicion of significant police activity, you get the feeling that things have moved on.

"This is such a fast moving situation, who knows where it will end up."

Officials have said the French nationals are linked to a Yemeni terror network.

On Wednesday night heavily armoured police raided an apartment in the city of Reims in the search for the killers. Seven people were detained overnight.

Another suspect handed himself in to police after he was named on social media as 18-year-old Hamyd Mourad.

Sky sources say the teenager, who has been arrested, is the brother-in-law of the suspects.

There are reports he was in school at the time of the attack and schoolmates said he was on the bus with them at 7.30am and midday on Wednesday.

Tensions remain high in the country after a female police officer was shot dead in southern Paris this morning.

A "criminal" blast was also reported at a kebab shop near a mosque in the eastern French town of Villefranche-sur-Saone. No one was injured.

Officials have not said either incident is linked to the Paris terror attack.

French investigators found a dozen Molotov cocktails and two jihadist flags in the getaway car abandoned shortly after the massacre.

Tributes to the victims have been left near Charlie Hebdo's offices and a  minute's silence was held in the French capital.

A staff member at the magazine said next week's issue will be published despite the bloodbath.

Copies of the latest issue of the three-euro (£2.30) weekly have been drawing bids of more than 70,000 euros (£54,700) on internet auction sites.

Downing Street said security has been increased at UK ports following the terror attack in Paris, although there is no specific threat to the country.

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A close friend of mine who happens to work and live in Paris shared how everything and everyone froze in the capital this day at noon with the silence's minute. In the streets, cars had stopped and bystanders lowered their heads. No sound was heard except for church and cathedral bells ringing as loud as possible. It was unheard of amongst my fellow countrymen.

class="headline" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1420755333163_642" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 35px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 300; line-height: 42px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 0px; padding-top: 15px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-right: 40px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"Terror suspects in Charlie Hebdo massacre were on U.S. ‘no fly’ listCounterterrorism officials tell Yahoo News they had long viewed the brothers as a potential threat

The two brothers wanted in the terror attack on a French weekly that killed 12 people Wednesday had long been viewed by U.S. officials as potential terror suspects, prompting them to be placed on a “no fly” list that banned them from boarding commercial aircraft into and out of the United States, U.S. counterterrorism sources told Yahoo News.

Cherif Kouachi, 32, and his brother, Said, 34, had both been entered into the U.S. government’s Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) system — a classified master database with more than 1 million names of individuals suspected of possible terror ties.

But the sources said information about the Kouachis was viewed as serious enough for their names to be forwarded to the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center for entry onto a number of government watch lists. The Kouachis were then placed on the “no fly” list — the most restrictive of the lists, with about 47,000 names.

A person placed on that list is viewed as a “threat to civil aviation or national security,” a U.S. official said. The official declined to say precisely when the Kouachis were placed on the list other than that they had been on it “for years.”

U.S. officials also declined Thursday to say what information prompted the watch-listing. But, according to press reports, Cherif Kouachi came to the attention of French authorities as early as 2005 when he was arrested in connection with a case involving Farid Benyettou, a radical preacher who gave sermons calling for jihad in Iraq.

Kouachi was brought to trial in 2008; according to trial testimony, he had become radicalized by the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the later images of detainee mistreatment in Abu Ghraib prison. He was convicted and given a three-year sentence for being involved in a network that recruited young French Muslims to fight in Iraq, but was then released because of the time he spent in pretrial detention.

Source

class="headline" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1420824140112_525" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 35px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 300; line-height: 42px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 0px; padding-top: 15px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-right: 40px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"Paris shooting: Charlie Hebdo terror suspects killed in police raidThird suspected terrorist fatally shot at Kosher grocery, hostages freed

Cherif and Said Kouachi, two suspects in the Charlie Hebdo massacre, were killed when French police raided a warehouse where the brothers were holding one person captive. A third suspected terrorist was killed by police at a Kosher grocery in Paris. Hostages at both locations were freed, but others are reportedly dead. 

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class="headline" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1420826466062_1412" style="font-size: 35px; font-weight: 300; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 0px; line-height: 42px; padding-top: 15px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-right: 40px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"2 Charlie Hebdo suspects killed, hostage freed

PARIS (AP) — Two al-Qaida-linked brothers suspected of slaying 12 people at a Paris newspaper came out with guns blazing Friday, prompting an assault on the printing plant where they had been hold up with a hostage, a French police official said. They were killed and their hostage was freed, authorities said.

Another gunman who took at least five hostages Friday afternoon at a kosher grocery in Paris also died in a nearly simultaneous raid there, said Gael Fabiano of the UNSA police union.

Moments later, several people were seen being led out of the Porte de Vincennes grocery store but security forces could still be seen moving around. It was not clear exactly how many hostages had been at the store or how many were freed.

France has been high alert since the country's worst terror attack in decades — the massacre Wednesday in Paris at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo that left 12 people dead.

Two groups of terrorists had seized hostages at separate locations around the French capital Friday, facing off against thousands of French security forces as the city shut down a famed Jewish neighborhood and scrambled to protect residents and tourists from further attacks.

By Friday afternoon, explosions and gunshots rang out and white smoke rose outside a printing plant in Dammartin-en-Goele, northeast of Paris, where brothers Cherif Kouachi, 32, and Said Kouachi, 34, had holed up with a hostage.

Security forces had surrounded the building for most of the day. After the explosions, a police SWAT forces could be seen on the roof of the building and one police helicopter landed near it.

Audrey Taupenas, spokeswoman for the town near the Charles de Gaulle airport, said the brothers had died in the clash.

Minutes before the storming, a gunman in a Paris kosher grocery store had threatened to kill his five hostages if French authorities launched an assault on the two brothers, a police official said. The two sets of hostage-takers know each other, said the official, who was not authorized to discuss the rapidly developing situations with the media.

Trying to fend off further attacks, the Paris mayor's office shut down all shops along Rosiers Street in the city's famed Marais neighborhood in the heart of the tourist district. Hours before the Jewish Sabbath, the street is usually crowded with shoppers — French Jews and tourists alike. The street is also only a kilometer (a half mile) away from Charlie Hebdo's offices.

At the kosher grocery near the Porte de Vincennes neighborhood in Paris, the gunman burst in shooting just a few hours before the Jewish Sabbath began, declaring "You know who I am," the official recounted. The attack came before sundown when the store would have been crowded with shoppers.

The official said the gunman is also believed responsible for the roadside killing of a Paris policewoman on Thursday.

Paris police released a photo of the gunman, Amedy Coulibaly, and a second suspect, a woman named Hayet Boumddiene, who the official said was his accomplice.

Several people wounded when the gunman opened fire in the kosher grocery were able to flee and get medical care, the official said.

Police said 100 students were under lockdown in schools nearby and the highway ringing Paris was closed.

Hours before and 40 kilometers (25 miles) away , a convoy of police trucks, helicopters and ambulances streamed toward Dammartin-en-Goele, a small industrial town near Charles de Gaulle airport, to seize the Charlie Hebdo suspects, who had hijacked a car in a nearby town after more than two days on the run.

"They said they want to die as martyrs," Yves Albarello, a local lawmaker inside the command post, told French television station i-Tele.

Cherif Kouachi, 32, was convicted of terrorism charges in 2008 for ties to a network sending jihadis to fight U.S. forces in Iraq.

A Yemeni security official said his 34-year-old brother, Said Kouachi, is suspected of having fought for al-Qaida in Yemen. Another senior security official said Said was in Yemen until 2012.

Both officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of an ongoing investigation into Kouachi's stay in Yemen.

Both brothers were also on the U.S. no-fly list, a senior U.S. counterterrorism official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss foreign intelligence publicly.

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this #respectformuslims hashtag pisses me off
people are dead, a cop murdered in the streets, domestic terrorism day after day, france's national security is on their toes,
and instead of grief for the victims and france, people are concerned for muslims' public image?

Brigitte Gabriel gives FANTASTIC answer to Muslim woman claiming all Muslims are portrayed badly

class="headline" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1420998950339_538" style="font-size: 35px; font-weight: 300; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 0px; line-height: 42px; padding-top: 15px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-right: 40px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"Muslim man hailed for life-saving courage during Paris siegePARIS (AP) — At a kosher supermarket in Paris, a quick-thinking Muslim employee hides several Jewish shoppers in the basement before sneaking out to brief police on the hostage-taker upstairs. In the town of Dammartin-en-Goele, a poker-faced businessman fools a pair of gunmen into believing they're alone in the building before being allowed to leave unharmed.

In the days after the bloody end of twin French hostage crises Friday, stories of life-saving courage are beginning to filter out. One of the most striking is the story of Lassana Bathily, a young immigrant from Mali who literally provided police with the key to ending the hostage crisis at the supermarket.

Bathily was in the store's underground stockroom when gunman Amedy Coulibaly burst in upstairs, according to accounts given to French media and to a friend of Bathily's who spoke to The Associated Press. Bathily turned off the stockroom's freezer and hid a group of frightened shoppers inside before sneaking out through a fire escape to speak to police. Initially confused for the attacker, he was forced to the ground and handcuffed.

Once police realized their mistake, he provided them with the key they needed to open the supermarket's metal blinds and mount their assault.

"The guy was so courageous," said Mohammed Amine, a 33-year-old friend and former coworker of Bathily's who spoke to him about the assault on Saturday.

Witnesses and authorities have corroborated Bathily's account.

A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to talk on the record, explained that the key Bathily gave police allowed them to storm the supermarket without having to punch their way through the shutters.

About 40 kilometers (25 miles) to the northeast, another hostage's cool head helped keep a bad day from getting worse. Businessman Michel Catalano was waiting on a supplier at his office in Dammartin-en-Goele when he saw brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi approaching with Kalashnikov rifles. As his colleague, a 26-year-old he identified only as Lilian, ran to hide, he distracted the gunmen. He offered them coffee and — after a brief exchange of fire with authorities outside — bandaged one of the brother's necks.

"I stayed an hour with them," Catalano told AP. "I was never scared, because I had only one idea in my head: 'They should not go to the end (of the hallway) to see Lilian, that's all.' That's what kept me calm."

Eventually, Catalano was released by the hostage-takers as police swapped text messages with Lilian inside. Just before dusk, the brothers ran outside, guns blazing. They died in a hail of return fire.

Back at the kosher supermarket, police used Bathily's key to mount their assault, killing Coulibaly and freeing 15 hostages.

Amid the bravery, there was also tragedy.

Police found four hostages dead inside the supermarket, apparently shot by Coulibaly when he entered the store.

Among them was Yohan Cohen, a 22-year-old who Amine said was "someone amazing, friendly, who likes (and) who respects people."

"I'm Muslim and he's Jewish," said Amine, an immigrant from Morocco. "But there's such respect between us. We're like brothers.

"They took my best friend."

Source

class="headline" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1421001841862_1155" style="font-size: 35px; font-weight: 300; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 0px; line-height: 42px; padding-top: 15px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-right: 40px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"Paris gunman appears in video, declares loyalty to Islamic StateDUBAI (Reuters) - One of three gunmen behind the worst militant attacks in France for decades appeared in a video released online on Sunday, declaring his allegiance to the Islamic State armed group and urging French Muslims to follow his example.

In the seven-minute video apparently intended for release after the actions, Amedy Coulibaly, who staged the attack on a Jewish deli, said the planned assaults on a satirical journal and a Jewish target were justified by French military interventions overseas.

A French anti-terrorist police source said there was no doubt it was Coulibaly in the French-language recording.

Seventeen victims were killed in three days of violence that began with an attack on the Charlie Hebdo weekly on Wednesday and ended with Friday's dual sieges at a print works outside Paris and a kosher supermarket in the city.

French security forces killed Coulibaly, 32, on Friday after he planted explosives at the Paris deli in a siege that claimed the lives of four hostages. They also shot dead two brothers behind the Hebdo killings, Said and Cherif Kouachi, after they took refuge in the print works.

The Kouachi brothers said they were aligned to al Qaeda, which competes for influence with Islamic State among militant Islamists.

Coulibaly had also called BFM-TV on Friday to claim allegiance to Islamic State, saying he wanted to defend Palestinians and target Jews.

He said in that call that he had jointly planned the attacks with the Kouachi brothers. Police confirmed they were all members of the same Islamist cell in northern Paris.

The video showed scenes of man resembling Coulibaly doing physical training and images of an arsenal of weapons and ammunition on the wooden floor of an apartment. He was shown variously in white robes, sitting with a gun at his side, and in combat outfit.

“I pledged allegiance to the Caliph as soon as the caliphate was declared,” he says, referring to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, whose group is an anti-government paramilitary force in both Iraq and Syria that has a growing network of followers elsewhere in the Middle East and Asia.

Coulibaly said he would be working together with the Kouachi brothers: “We’ve done things a bit together, a bit apart, to try and (achieve) more impact."

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Hackers Declare War On Al Qaeda To Avenge Charlie Hebdo Massacre



In revenge for the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the Anonymous hackers declared war on Al Qaeda and jihadist websites.
The Belgian hackers posted a video online addressed to “al Qaida, the Islamic State and other terrorists.”
In the video, which was uploaded to the hacking group’s YouTube account, a man wearing a Guy Fawkes mask and a hood says in a distorted French voice, “We are declaring war against you, the terrorists.”
In declaring cyber war against jihadist groups, Anonymous said it would protect free speech from “obscurantism and mysticism.” The hackers expressed their disgust at the “cowardly and despicable acts,” and offered their condolences to the families of the murdered victims and said it was now their duty to react.
“Disgusted and also shocked, we can’t fall down, it is our responsibility to react. Expect a massive reaction from us.”
The hacker in the video said that the group will track down and close all accounts on social networks related to suspected terrorists. As part of the hackers’ war against jihadists, they have created a Twitter account and asked its followers to report Twitter accounts of suspected terrorists. The hackers have already collected more than 100 accounts on Twitter to target.
The hackers have already taken responsibility for bringing down Ansar-Alhaqq.net with a distributed denial of-service attack. The religious website is published in French and Arabic and flies the Islamic State flag.



The mysterious hacking group that have declared war on Al Qaeda have previously been linked to online attacks around the world aimed at targeting governments for policies of which the hackers disapprove.
Speaking to the New York Daily News, Gabriella Coleman, a professor at Montreal’s McGill University, said that the jihadists are a typical enemy of the hacking group.
“It was wholly unsurprising that Anonymous launched #OpCharlieHebdo as censorship is one of the only core issues to continually garner their attention.”
It is not exactly clear how many members are operating in Anonymous or the identity of the figure in the video. The hackers are a capable outfit previously responsible for hacking websites belonging to government departments, companies, and large organizations.
The hackers have declared war, and their message is loud and clear, “We will find you.”
Source

class="headline" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1421094783606_1222" style="font-size: 35px; font-weight: 300; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 0px; line-height: 42px; padding-top: 15px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-right: 40px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"Turkey confirms woman wanted over Paris attack crossed into SyriaAnkara (AFP) - Turkey on Monday confirmed that Hayat Boumeddiene, the wanted partner of one of the gunmen behind the terror attacks in France, travelled through Turkey last week on her way to Syria.

"She entered Turkey on January 2 from Madrid. There are images of her at the airport," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu was quoted as saying by state-run news agency Anatolia.

Cavusoglu said the 26-year-old, who married gunman Amedy Coulibaly in an Islamic ceremony, stayed at a hotel in Kadikoy on the Asian side of Istanbul and was accompanied by another person.

She then crossed into Syria on January 8, according to her phone records, Cavusoglu said, without making clear if she travelled to Syria on her own.

A Turkish security source on Saturday had also told AFP that Boumeddiene had entered Turkey on January 2 and was believed to have moved on to the southeastern Turkish city of Sanliurfa and then to Syria.

But Turkey did not arrest her because of a lack of timely intelligence from France, the source said.

Cavusoglu's comments confirm that Boumeddiene was already outside France when the killing spree began, contrary to earlier speculation that she had been involved in the Paris killings in which 17 people died.

Boumeddiene is suspected of having had a role in her partner attacks which culminated in a bloody hostage-taking in a kosher supermarket on Friday after he had shot dead a policewoman close to a synagogue the day before.

But despite earlier describing her as "armed and dangerous", French police sources said she was likely already in Turkey at the time of the attacks.

Western countries have long accused Turkey of not doing enough to stem the flow of jihadists seeking to join Islamic State (IS) group fighters in neighbouring Syria.

But Ankara insists it has now stepped up frontier security and has repeatedly said the West also has a responsibility to share intelligence.

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class="headline" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1421517385786_1410" style="font-size: 35px; font-weight: 300; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 0px; line-height: 42px; padding-top: 15px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-right: 40px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"Niger protesters burn churches in second day of Charlie riotsNIAMEY (Reuters) - Stone-throwing demonstrators set fire to two churches in Niger's capital Niamey on Saturday, in the latest protest in France's former African colonies at French newspaper Charlie Hebdo's cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad.

A day after five people were killed in Niger in protests over the cartoons, protesters in Niamey attacked a police station and burned at least two police cars near the main mosque after authorities banned a meeting called by local Muslim leaders. Police responded with teargas.

"They offended our Prophet Mohammed. That's what we didn't like," said Amadou Abdoul Ouahab, who took part in the demonstration. "This is the reason why we have asked Muslims to come, so that we can explain this to them, but the state refused. That's why we're angry today."

Demonstrations were also reported in regional towns, including Maradi, 600 km (375 miles) east of Niamey, where two churches were burned. Another church and a residence of the foreign minister were burned in the eastern town of Goure.

Four Muslim preachers who had convened the meeting in Niamey were arrested, police sources said. Protesters burned the French flag and set up roadblocks on streets in the town centre but no casualties were reported on Saturday.

The French embassy in Niamey warned its citizens not to go out on the streets.

The death toll from Friday's clashes in Niger's second largest city of Zinder, rose to five after emergency services discovered a burned body inside a Catholic Church.

On Friday, churches were burned, Christian homes looted and the French cultural centre attacked during the violence in Zinder, residents said.

A police officer and three civilians had already been confirmed killed in the demonstrations against the Charlie Hebdo cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, police sources said.

Peaceful marches took place after Friday prayers in the capital cities of other West African countries - Mali, Senegal and Mauritania - and Algeria in North Africa, all former French colonies.

In Algiers, several police were injured in clashes with protesters angered by the cartoons.

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Wow. Christians had nothing to do with the comics/newspaper. Why destroy churches?
I wonder if we're destined for another holy war.