Charlie Hebdo: How events unfolded in the wake of the terror attack that shook Paris
This is the third devastating attack on French soil in less than two years
LAST night’s devastating attack on Nice struck just a year and a half after the terror ambush on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
Fresh in the memory of France’s citizens are images of the chilling aftermath scenes in the blood-smeared office where 12 people were murdered.
Within minutes of the attack, anti-terror cops had swooped on a nearby village and launched house-to-house searches.
Said Kouachi, 34, and Cherif Kouachi, 33, were soon at the centre of a huge manhunt
after the shootings at the magazine’s offices.
The masked pair had been spotted with AK-47s and rocket launchers the next day, 50 miles north-east of Paris, in a hijacked grey Renault Clio with covered-up number plates.
Scores of armed cops swooped on the area near Villers-Cotteret before converging on nearby Longpont.
Restaurant staff in the village said they saw two armed men abandon a car and walk into the forest.
France raised its terror alert and deployed soldiers in Île-de-France and Picardy.
A major manhunt eventually led to the discovery of the suspects, who exchanged fire with police. The brothers took hostages at a signage company in Dammartin-en-Goele on 9 January and were shot dead when they emerged from the building firing.
The phrase Je suis Charlie became the slogan of support at the rallies and in social media after the attacks.
Staff of Charlie Hebdo continued with the publication, and the next issue in print ran 7.95million copies in six languages, compared to its typical print run of 60,000 in only French.