After three days of bloodshed that has left 17 people dead, French security forces are desperately searching for the former partner of one of the three Islamist gunmen killed by police. Hayat Boumeddiene, described by police as armed and dangerous, is the ex-girlfriend of Amedy Coulibaly, who died on Friday evening when heavily armed elite forces stormed a Jewish supermarket in northern Paris where he was holding at least 15 people hostage. Coulibaly had killed four shoppers when he entered the kosher store on the Avenue de la Porte de Vincennes on Friday lunchtime carrying two Kalashnikov assault rifles, the Paris prosecutor’s office said. composite of Boumeddiene Hayat Boumeddiene is the ex-girlfriend of Amedy Coulibaly, who died in the Jewish supermarket siege. Photograph: AFP/Getty In a second, near-simultaneous assault with stun grenades and assault rifles, French special forces also shot dead Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, the brothers behind the killing on Wednesday of 12 people, including two police officers, at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris. The Kouachis had taken refuge in a warehouse about 25 miles north-east of Paris, but emerged to fire at police. CRIF, the umbrella body for France’s Jewish organisations, released the names of the four people shot dead by Coulibaly on Friday lunchtime. They are Yoav Hattab, Philippe Braham, Yohan Cohen et François-Michel Saada. Le CRIF et la communauté juive de France souhaitent rendre hommage à la mémoire des victimes de la tuerie de lHyperCacher de Vincennes. — CRIF (@Le_CRIF) January 10, 2015 It also condemned the anti-semitic nature of the attack, saying: “These French fellow citizens were slaughtered coldly and pitilessly, because they were Jewish.” gu/p/44mqq
Posted on: Sat, 10 Jan 2015 18:57:54 +0000