On Wednesday, January 7,, 2015, two masked gunmen armed with assault rifles and an assortment of other weapons stormed into the offices of weekly French satirist magazine, Charlie Hebdo.
Staff Reporter
While chanting, “Allahu Akbar” or “God is the Greatest” in Arabic, the gunmen fired up to 50 shots during the ensuing massacre, killing 12 people and wounding 11 others.
The gunmen also killed a French National Police Officer in the streets of Paris and fired on a police car, killing the officer during their subsequent getaway.
The motive for the Charlie Hebdo shootings, the worst terrorist attack in France in recent memory, was retribution for the satirical magazine’s continued commitment to spoofing Islam.
The magazine had been inundated with threats and actual attacks, specifically for several controversial cartoon depictions of the Islamic religion’s prophet, Muhammad.
Thousands of Parisians defiantly took to the streets that night to hold a vigil for the victims of the massacre. A common theme and chant of the vigil was the slogan, “Je Suis Charlie,” or “I am Charlie.” The phrase has since become a global slogan that symbolically shows solidarity with the French and the victims of the tragedy.