Paris attacks: PM says France must not lower guard as police hunt suspected accomplice

Manuel Valls, the French prime minister, is speaking in Evry, in the southern suburbs of Paris:

They wanted to demolish the paper Charlie Hebdo, which must carry on. Its special edition next week will be an exceptional moment.

All who said ‘Je suis Charlie’, everyone has understood this symbol …

They [the terrorists] also wanted to attack the strengths of the republic: the police. A police officer who was doing his work was, in very cowardly fashion, killed.

They wanted to attack tolerance. The Jews of France, once again. Four dead yesterday. Without the professionalism of the forces, the figures would have been much higher.

No doubt yesterday we did feel relieved but there is a risk we could forget all this – this will not be the case. We mustn’t lower our guard … it’s essential for the security of the French people.
The forces are going to continue searching to apprehend the accomplices … we want to dismantle these networks. This is our greatest challenge.

Valls mentions French intervention in Mali, saying there are as many Malians in Evry as French people:

This country that is a friend of ours was being attacked … It was Muslims who were being attacked through this terrorism.

On Tuesday parliament is going to have to decide whether we are going to pursue our mission in Iraq.

We have to carry on … of course we have to draw lessons from what has happened … There are always ways for the terrorists to slip in … there are so many people involved in jihadism, in Syria and Iraq.

There are also internal threats … we must never lower our guard, and we have to be really strong, really tough, where the enemies of freedom are concerned.

Turning to tomorrow’s unity march in Paris, Valls goes on:

The rally will be unbelievable, it will remain in the annals of history … It will show the dignity of the French people … do come.

He says transport from Evry to the march will be free tomorrow. Representatives from Arab and Muslim countries will be there, he says, along with representatives of various religions. Secularism is the freedom to believe or not believe, Valls adds:

Terrorism tried to create splits and damage us. Tomorrow we have to give the best response we can possibly give.
Tomorrow’s rally will be a cry for freedom … to the values of 1789.

After three days of bloodshed that has left 17 people dead, French security forces are desperately searching for the former partner of one of the three Islamist gunmen killed by police.
Hayat Boumeddiene, described by police as armed and dangerous, is the ex-girlfriend of Amedy Coulibaly, who died on Friday evening when heavily armed elite forces stormed a Jewish supermarket in northern Paris where he was holding at least 15 people hostage.

Coulibaly had killed four shoppers when he entered the kosher store on the Avenue de la Porte de Vincennes carrying two Kalashnikov assault rifles, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.

President François Hollande called an emergency cabinet meeting on Saturday morning, having warned the night before that French people should be prepared for more violence, and urged “vigilance, unity and mobilisation”.

As the hunt intensified for Boumeddiene, wanted in connection with Coulibaly’s fatal shooting of a police officer in Montrouge on Thursday, a badly shaken France prepared for a march of national unity in Paris on Sunday. The British prime minister, David Cameron, and his German, Spanish and Italian counterparts, Angela Merkel, Mariano Rajoy and Matteo Renzi, were due to attend.

More details have emerged this morning of conversations between the terrorists and journalists during the two sieges yesterday.

RTL has published extracts of Amedy Coulibaly threatening hostages in the kosher supermarket in eastern Paris. The radio station said it was able to record his words after a phone was left off the hook in the store. Condemning the French state, Coulibaly reportedly told the hostages:

They must stop attacking the Islamic State, stop unveiling our women, stop putting our brothers in prison for nothing at all.
It is you who is financing [the government]. You pay taxes.

RTL reports that a hostage then said: “We are obliged to [pay taxes]”, to which Coulibaly replied: “You do not have to. I do not pay taxes.”
You can see more of the RTL report here.

Meanwhile, Igor Sahiri, a journalist with French TV station BFM TV, who spoke to Cherif Kouachi by phone during yesterday’s siege warehouse in Dommartin-en-Goele, has given an account of the conversation to Radio 4’s Today programme. Sahiri rang the office of the warehouse and the phone was answered by the younger brother. Sahiri told the BBC:

He was really prepared. It was somebody very serene. He was very calm. It was just like a normal discussion, no rudeness.
My feeling was that this kind of man is ready to die. They way he was breathless made me feel that this guy was ready to die, was very aware of what would happen at this time.

Sahiri said Cherif Kouachi told him:

We are just telling you we are the defenders of the prophet and that I, Cherif Kouachi, have been sent by Al-Qaida of Yemen and that I went over there and that Anwar Al Awlaki financed me.

Asked if he intended to kill more civilians, Kouachi replied:

Did we kill any civilians in the past two days when you were looking for us? Come on.
We are not killers, we are the defenders of the Prophet, and we kill those who insult him.

You can hear the Radio 4 interview here.
BFM TV also received a call from Coulibaly from the kosher store, who told journalists he and the Kouachi brothers had “synchronised to do the operations”:

We just decided at the start, so they did Charlie Hebdo and I took care of police officers.