Paris: Chilling accounts of the carnage that took place at the office of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo have surfaced. A photograph shows papers spread on the floor with blood stains spread all around.Female reporter Sigolene Vinson, who survived the carnage, revealed how the jihadi terrorists who massacred her colleagues spared her life, saying they were doing so because she was a woman.
Sigolene Vinson told Radio France Internationale that one of the killers held a gun to her head, but decided against killing her. Vinson said one of the shooters told her: "I am not killing you because you are a woman and we don't kill women but you have to convert to Islam, read the Qoran and wear a veil."
The terrorists then shouted 'Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar' as they fled the scene. Charlie Hebdo magazine staff thought somebody had set off fire crackers inside the newspaper office as a 'joke'. This was seconds before they were gunned down in cold blood.
Laurent Leger, a Charlie Hebdo journalist who was in the room where most of the victims were slaughtered, told how some were laughing when they first heard shots.'We thought it was a joke, that it was fire crackers' said Leger. 'Then we heard footsteps. The door opened. A guy shouted 'Allahu Akbar'.
Leger said: 'He looked like a GIGN and RAID (French Special Forces) guy, he was hooded. He was all in black. He had a gun he was holding with both hands.'
Leger said he saw 'barbarism enter the newspaper' as the terrorists called out the name 'Charb', referring to editor Stephane Charbonnier, one of those killed.
'They called out the name of Charb, yes. But after that they fired into the group,' said Leger, who said he threw himself under a table to get away from the gunman and 'escaped his eyes.'The shooter then turned to his accomplice, with Leger saying: 'He said he thought he had killed everybody, but did not kill women.'
One of the terrorists, Paris-born Said, 34, travelled to Yemen as recently as 2011, where he was trained by an Al Qaeda affiliate in marksmanship and other combat skills. Both French and American officials were aware Said was inspired by Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born cleric who ran Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Before he was killed in an American drone strike in September 2011, al-Awlaki often called for the killing of Charlie Hebdo cartoonists who insulted Prophet Mohammad.
