AP PHOTOS: The Charlie Hebdo slaughter and follow-up terror attacks 10 years ago that changed France
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When Charlie Hebdo cartoonist Coco thought back and drew for a new documentary about the slaughter she survived 10 years ago at the French satirical journal, the memories that streamed from her marker pen were all black. Black barrels of the guns that the al-Qaida-linked gunmen used to mow down 12 people, decimating Charlie's staff of cheeky cartoonists who reveled in their right to lampoon all and sundry and poked fun at Islamic extremism with caricatures of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad.
The black hoods that the killers wore as they sprayed Charlie's Paris offices with bullets and then rejoiced outside, yelling: “We avenged the Prophet Muhammad. We killed Charlie Hebdo!”. And the darkness that, in the immediate aftermath, seemed to engulf all of France, shaken to the core by the horror and the dawning realization that the bloodshed had profoundly changed the country, scarring it forever.
The Charlie attack was just a first blow. As France was reeling from the attack, terror struck again. With a massive police manhunt closing in on brothers Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, cornering the Charlie Hebdo killers in the industrial zone of a town northeast of Paris, accomplice Amédy Coulibaly, armed with an assault rifle, pistols and explosives, stormed a kosher grocery store in Paris, killing four people and taking others hostage.
