Amedy Coulibaly, one of the three gunmen behind the worst militant attacks in France for decades, declares his allegiance in an unknown location to the Islamic State and urges French Muslims to follow his example, in this still image taken from video January 11, 2015. In the seven-minute posthumous video, apparently intended for release after the actions, Coulibaly, who staged the attack on a kosher supermarket, said the planned assaults on satirical journal Charlie Hebdo and the Jewish target were justified by French military interventions overseas. Seventeen victims were killed in three days of violence and ended with Friday's dual sieges at a print works outside Paris and the supermarket in the city. A French anti-terrorist police source said there was no doubt it was Coulibaly in the French-language recording. [Photo/Agencies] |
Several other countries are also involved in the hunt for possible accomplices to Coulibaly and the other gunmen in the French attacks, brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi.
The Kouachi brothers claimed allegiance to al-Qaida in Yemen, and Coulibaly to the Islamic State group.
In Spain, authorities said Coulibaly drove his common-law wife from France to Madrid on Dec. 31 and was with her until she took a Jan. 2 flight to Istanbul.
Spain's National Court said it was investigating what Coulibaly did in the country's capital with his wife, Hayat Boumeddiene, and a third person who wasn't identified but is suspected of helping Boumeddiene get from Turkey to Syria.
France is on edge since last week's attacks, which began at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. The paper, repeatedly threatened for its caricatures of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad, buried several of its slain staff members Thursday even as it reprinted another weekly issue with Muhammad on its cover.
Defense officials said France came under an unprecedented cyber assault with 19,000 cyberattacks launched after the country's bloodiest terrorist attacks in decades, frustrating authorities as they try to thwart repeat violence.
The attacks, mostly relatively minor denial-of-service attacks, hit sites as varied as military regiments to pizza shops but none appeared to have caused serious damage.
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