Charlie Hebdo had long provoked governments, churches and extremists alike, and its cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad had already brought threats and a firebombing in 2011. Around midday on January 7, 2015, two armed brothers entered the building during an editorial meeting and opened fire. The dead included the editor Stéphane Charbonnier and the cartoonists Cabu, Georges Wolinski and Tignous, along with police officers. The slogan 'Je suis Charlie' spread around the world within hours.
The gunmen arrived at the Paris offices while the staff were holding their weekly editorial meeting. Within minutes they had killed 12 people. Among them were the editor Stéphane Charbonnier, known as Charb, and three of the country's best-loved cartoonists: Jean Cabut (Cabu), Georges Wolinski and Bernard Verlhac (Tignous). As the brothers escaped, they shot dead Ahmed Merabet, a Muslim police officer, on the pavement outside.
A manhunt followed. It ended on January 9 when police killed Saïd and Chérif Kouachi at a printing works in Dammartin-en-Goële, north of Paris, the same day an associate took hostages at a kosher supermarket in the capital. On January 11, millions of people marched across France, one of the largest public gatherings in the country's history.
The survivors refused to stop publishing. Working from borrowed space at the newspaper Libération, they produced issue No. 1178 a week after the attack. Its cover showed Muhammad holding a 'Je suis Charlie' sign under the words 'All is forgiven', and it sold millions of copies. The attack sharpened arguments in France and beyond about free speech, blasphemy and the limits of satire.
Key people: Stéphane Charbonnier, Saïd Kouachi, Chérif Kouachi, Ahmed Merabet