France hunts for attack accomplices, deploys troops
Published 8:46 am Monday, January 12, 2015
PARIS — France ordered 10,000 troops into the streets Monday to protect sensitive sites after three days of bloodshed as it hunted for the accomplices to the Islamic militants who left 17 people dead as they terrorized the nation.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the search is urgent because “the threat is still present” after the attacks that began Wednesday with a massacre at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and ended when the three attackers were killed Friday in two nearly simultaneous clashes with security forces.
“The work on these attacks, on these terrorist and barbaric acts continues … because we consider that there are most probably some possible accomplices,” Valls told BFM television.
It was not clear exactly how many accomplices French forces were hunting for in addition to Hayat Boumeddiene, the common-law wife of Amedy Coulibaly, who killed four hostages Friday at a kosher grocery in Paris before being killed by security forces. Boumeddiene was reportedly in Syria with a male travel companion.
France’s defense minister said the country is mobilizing the 10,000 troops to protect its people. Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said the deployment will be fully in place by Tuesday and will focus on the most sensitive locations. By midday Monday, Paris’ Marais — one of the country’s oldest Jewish neighborhoods as well as a major tourist site — was filled with police and soldiers.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said 4,700 security forces would be assigned to protect France’s 717 Jewish schools.
Boumeddiene crossed into Syria on Thursday, the day after the Charlie Hebdo newspaper massacre that left 12 dead, and the same day her husband shot a French policewoman to death on the outskirts of Paris.