Police end 2 hostage situations in France: Suspects killed, hostages freed
French elite forces stormed two hostage sites Friday, killing two brothers behind the Charlie Hebdo massacre and a third Islamic radical ally in a fiery end that also claimed the lives of four hostages.
The killings brought a dramatic end to three days of terror and high tension that began Wednesday when the heavily armed Kouachi brothers burst into the satirical magazine's office and slaughtered some of France's best-loved cartoonists.
As shots and explosions rang out in the City of Light, five people, including the gunman, were found dead in the aftermath of the assault on a Jewish supermarket in eastern Paris and several captives were freed, security sources said.
Gunmen at both sieges told French TV they were acting together in the name of Al-Qaeda in Yemen and the Islamic State group.
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French hostage crisis: Blood, bodies, bullets turn heart of France into war zone
Pools of blood, shattered glass and bodies in the street - this was the day when the heart of France turned into a war zone.
As commandos assaulted a Paris supermarket to free hostages on Friday, sending locals running in terror, more special forces stormed a building in a small town nearby, killing two Islamist hostage-takers.
The kind of violence that seemed unimaginable in the City of Light concluded more than two days of terrible tension as police hunted the Islamist gunmen who had massacred 12 people at a satirical weekly magazine Wednesday.
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French hostage crisis: French imams rail against 'crazies who have seized our religion'
French imams condemned violence committed in the name of Islam during Friday prayers as the country reeled from the double hostage dramas that followed the massacre at Charlie Hebdo magazine.
The same message - distancing the country's five million Muslims from the Islamic radicals responsible for the attacks - was relayed at more than 2,300 mosques across France.
"We denounce the odious crimes committed by the terrorists, whose criminal action endangers our willingness to live together," said the rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, Dalil Boubakeur.
He also appealed to "all the Muslims of France" to take part in demonstrations planned for Sunday to pay homage to the 12 victims of the attack on Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday, the bloodiest in France in more than half a century.
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Paris shooting: Anonymous 'hacktivists' vow revenge for Charlie Hebdo attack in YouTube video
A new ally in the war on terror has emerged in the wake of the massacre at the office of Paris' Charlie Hebdo magazine - on YouTube.
The group of "hacktivists" - activist computer hackers - that calls itself Anonymous posted a video in which a masked member, speaking in French, declares "war on you, the terrorists" for the attack in which 12 people were murdered, singling out the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Al Qaeda.
"We will track you down - every last one - and will kill you," the spokesman says, according to a translation of one of its videos in the Mirror online. "You allowed yourselves to kill innocent people, we will therefore avenge their deaths."
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British preacher Abu Hamza jailed for life in US
A US judge sentenced British hate preacher Abu Hamza on Friday to life behind bars for 11 terrorism and kidnapping convictions, calling his crimes that spanned the globe "evil" and "barbaric."
The hook-handed imam, blind in one eye and a double-hand amputee, became a tabloid bogeyman in Britain for preaching vitriolic, anti-American sermons at the Finsbury Park mosque in north London.
He stared impassively at the table and pursed his lips as Judge Katherine Forrest sentenced him to life behind bars, eight months after he was convicted by a jury on May 19 after a four-week trial.
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