Charlie Hebdo Paris Shooting: First Image Of Bloodied Newspaper Office Emerges

First Image Of Charlie Hebdo Bloodstained Office
|

The first chilling image of the bloodied offices of French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo has emerged.

Published in French daily Le Monde, it shows a hallway smeared with blood.

Blood-stained papers also lie on the ground, hinting at the chaos and panic that unfolded as masked gunmen burst into the Paris offices on Wednesday armed with Kalashnikovs and opened fire.

The editorial team would have been meeting for their morning conference when the attackers entered the room, calling their names before shooting each one.

Eight journalists, two police officers, a maintenance worker and a visitor were killed in the attack, which has left France on its highest level of terror alert.

Open Image Modal

Two suspects were filmed leaping out of a car and pointing their weapons at a fallen policeman

A massive manhunt for two suspects, brothers Said Kouachi and Cherif Kouachi, is ongoing.

According to media reports, Kouachi, 32, was first considered to be a possible terrorist by the French authorities when he was in his early 20s.

He is believed to have come under the influence of a radical Paris-based Islamic preacher and was reportedly convicted of a criminal charge in 2008 after associating with an illegal organisation backing jihad in Iraq.

Kouachi, originally from the Paris suburb of Pantin, was sentenced to three years in prison with 18 months suspended.

Unconfirmed reports also suggest that the attack at Charlie Hebdo could be linked with Yemen-based militant group al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Intelligence sources are said to believe that the brothers might have trained in Yemen.