Liberman after Paris attack: Free world must not be intimidated by terror

he Foreign Minister conveyed Israel's condolences to the French government, and said Israel “identified” with France's pain.

By HERB KEINON, REUTERS
Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman speaks to the press before the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem (photo credit: EMIL SALMAN/POOL)
Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman speaks to the press before the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem
(photo credit: EMIL SALMAN/POOL)
It is forbidden for the free world to allow itself to be intimidated by terrorists, and must stand united and determined against terrorism, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said Wednesday.
Liberman's comment was the first official Israeli response to the terrorist attack in Paris.
The Foreign Minister conveyed Israel's condolences to the French government, and said Israel “identified” with France's pain.
Hooded gunmen stormed the Paris offices of a weekly satirical magazine renowned for lampooning radical Islam, killing at least 12 people, including two police officers in the worst militant attack on French soil in recent decades.
One of the men was captured on video shouting "Allah!" as four shots rang out. Two assailants are then seen calmly leaving the scene and remain at large.
Charlie Hebdo (Charlie Weekly) is renowned for courting controversy with satirical attacks on political and religious leaders and has published numerous cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammad. The last tweet on its account mocked Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the militant Islamic State, which has taken control of large swathes of Iraq and Syria.
"This is a terrorist attack, there is no doubt about it," President Francois Hollande told reporters after rushing to the scene of the attack. His government raised France's security level to the highest notch and scheduled an emergency cabinet meeting.
The gunmen fled towards the eastern Paris suburbs after holding up a car, police officials said.
"There is possibility of other attacks and other sites are being secured," Police union official Rocco Contento said.
Sirens could be heard across Paris as Prime Minister Manuel Valls said security would be ramped up at transport hubs, religious sites, media offices and department stores.
The White House said US security officials were in contact with their French counterparts.
"If the perpetrators are still at large, we're going to track them down, and we're going to work with the French to do that," a White House spokesman told MSNBC television.
Another 20 people were injured in the attack, including four or five critically. Police union official Contento described the scene inside the offices as "carnage".
"About a half an hour ago two black-hooded men entered the building with Kalashnikovs (rifles)," witness Benoit Bringer told TV station iTELE. "A few minutes later we heard lots of shots."
In a video shot by journalist Martin Boudot from a rooftop near the magazine's offices, a man can be heard screaming "Allah"; then followed the sound of three or four shots.
"They're coming out. There are two of them," says a new voice on the video as two men appear in the frame, then raise their arms in a shooting posture.
France last year reinforced its anti-terrorism laws and is already on alert after calls from Islamist militants to attack its citizens and interests in reprisal for French military strikes on Islamist strongholds in the Middle East and Africa.
The attack, as yet unclaimed, comes amid what a number of commentators have identified as rising xenophobia in Europe, with thousands of protesters in several German cities rallying earlier this week against Muslim immigration. France's five-million-strong Muslim population is Europe's largest.
"I am extremely angry. These are criminals, barbarians. They have sold their soul to hell. This is not freedom. This is not Islam and I hope the french will come out united at the end of this," said Hassen Chalghoumi, imam of the Drancy mosque in Paris's Seine-Saint-Denis northern suburb.