Paris Terror Attacks: French Authorities Hunt Hayat Boumeddiene
Security forces are trying to thwart new attacks following tragedies.
— -- French law enforcement continued searching for a woman linked to two of the men suspected in terror attacks that killed 17 people over three days.
Hayat Boumeddiene is the girlfriend of Amedy Coulibaly, who killed a police officer in Paris on Thursday, according to French law enforcement. A spokesman for the interior ministry said she wasn't present during the shooting.
Police killed Coulibaly, 32, the next day while raiding a kosher market where they say he had killed four people.
Authorities described Boumeddiene, 26, as armed and dangerous. She married Coulibaly in a religious ceremony in 2009 but their wedding was not legally recognized in France because they did not have civil union.
The couple lived in a Paris suburb and spent the last year in contact with the wife of Cherif Kouachi, one of the men believed to be responsible for the attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo, according to the Paris public prosecutor's office. Boumeddiene and Kouachi's wife reportedly exchanged approximately 500 phone calls.
While Boumeddiene was never convicted of a crime, she had several run-ins with police and was once questioned about her reaction to attacks by al Qaeda, according to judicial records obtained by The Associated Press.
"I don't have any opinion," she said.
With Boumeddiene on the loose today, the French government urged the nation to remain vigilant as security forces try to thwart new attacks.
"Given the context, we are exposed to risks," French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said after an emergency security meeting.
Cazeneuve said the government is deploying hundreds of troops in addition to thousands of police and other security forces and maintaining its terror alert system at the highest level in the Paris region.
He said investigators were focused on determining whether the attackers were part of a larger extremist network. In a statement to the AP, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula calimed responsibility for the attack at the offices of Charlie Hebdo.
The family of Ahmed Merapet, a Muslim police officer who was killed outside the offices of Charlie Hebdo, asked for an end to violence.
"Do not confuse those extremists and Muslims," Merapet's brother Malek Merabet said, according to news station France24. "Do not confuse the mad men. They have no color and no religion."
Today the names of four people killed in a kosher grocery store were released by the Representative Council for Jewish Institution in France. The names were listed as Yoav Hattab, Philippe Braham, Yohan Cohen and François-Michel Saada.
The three-day wave of violence culminated in concurrent standoffs Friday.
At a printing company in the town of Dammartin-en-Goele, 20 miles northeast of Paris, police killed Said and Cherif Kouachi after authorities say the brothers came out of the building firing at them. At the same time, police killed Coulibaly as he holed up a kosher market in Paris.
The simultaneous standoffs were linked with suspected gunmen in each situation connected through an earlier attempt to break a convicted terrorist out of jail, Paris' public prosecutor said.
Coulibaly was convicted of involvement in a previous attempt to help a convicted terrorist escape custody, while Cherif Kouachi was released.
The man they were accused of trying to free from prison was Smain Ali Belkacem, who was convicted of being behind the 1995 attack on the Paris transport system that killed eight people and wounded 120.
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.
