France mobilises 10,000 troops in wake of Hebdo attacks
France mobilises 10,000 troops in wake of Hebdo attacks
Government minister says he believes there are more accomplices on the run following deadly attack on Charlie Hebdo office in Paris last week.
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French troops would guard sensitive areas, such as the Eiffel tower [AFP/Getty]
France's government has ordered 10,000 troops onto the streets to protect sensitive sites in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, as police continue to hunt for the perpetrator's accomplices.
The French defence minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, on Monday said the mobilisation would be fully in place by Tuesday, and would focus on the most sensitive locations. Nearly 5,000 soldiers would be assigned to protect France's 717 Jewish schools, the interior ministry said.
The French prime minister, Manuel Valls, added that the threat of further attacks was still present, and said police were still searching for suspected accomplices.
"The work on these attacks, on these terrorist and barbaric acts continues... because we consider that there are most probably some possible accomplices," Valls said on French television.
| French troops deployed around Paris. |
The mobilisation comes a day after hundreds of thousands of people marched through Paris to condemn the Wednesday attack on the Hebdo satirical magazine, which killed 12 including two police, the death of a police officer a day later, and the deaths of four others in a kosher supermarket on Friday.
The prime suspects, Said and Cherif Kouachi and Amedy Coulibaly, were killed by French police on Friday.
Video emerged on Sunday of Coulibaly outlining how the attacks would unfold. Police want to find the person who shot and posted the video, which was edited after the attacks were over.
Al-Qaeda in Yemen claimed to have organised and trained the Kouachi brothers, while Coulibaly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group in his video.
| Abbas and Abdullah draw fire for attending Paris anti-terrorism march. Read more here. |
Police said they were still hunting for Hayat Boumeddiene, a suspected accomplice of Coulibaly. However, a Turkish intelligence official told the AP news agency that a woman by the same name strongly resembling Boumeddiene flew into Istanbul on January 2 and was probably now in Syria.
Boumeddiene, 26, reportedly married Coulibaly in an Islamic ceremony in July 2009, a union not recognised under French law.
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