Armed men have attacked a French
satirical magazine based in Paris, killing at
least 12 people, including four cartoonists and
two policemen, police officials have said.
Xavier Castaing, head of communications for
the Paris police prefecture, confirmed the
deaths on Wednesday.
Charlie Hebdo has drawn repeated threats for
its caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed,
among other controversial sketches.
The lawyer of the magazine confirmed that
four cartoonists working with the publication,
including the publisher Stephane Charbonnier,
known as 'Charb', were among the dead.
The cartoonists known as Cabu, Tignous and
Wolinski were also killed in the attack, AFP
news agency quoted a judicial source as
saying.
Al Jazeera's Jacky Rowland, reporting from
the French capital, said journalists and
cartoonists reported several masked men
dressed in black entering the building who
then began to fire with automatic weapons.
"Some journalists took refuge on the roof,"
Rowland said.
" Charlie Hebdo has pushed boundaries in the
past, and continues to challenge the idea of
censorship."
President Francois Hollande, speaking outside
the office of the magazine, described the
attack as having been carried out by barbaric
people.
"This is an attack on free speech." he told
reporters. "No one can harm the spirit of this
country which is this newspaper".
Rowland said that a terrorism alert has been
raised to its highest level in the wake of the
attack.
The magazine tweeted a cartoon of Abu Bakr
al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State in
Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, minutes
before the attack.
Benoit Bringer, a journalist with Agence
Premiere Ligne who saw the attack, told the
iTele network he saw several masked men
armed with machine guns.
Hollande has held a cabinet meeting at Elysee
Palace over the incident on Wednesday.
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