Paris Gunmen Are Skilful Professional Killers

By Sam Kiley, Foreign Affairs Editor - Sky news

Shouting but not hysterical, the gunmen emerged from their black Citroen simultaneously.

They took careful aim and opened fire with double-tap shots.

A policeman went down on the pavement about 20 yards away.

The gunmen advanced with their rifles still on their shoulders, one a little in front of the other to provide mutual support.

One jogged towards the downed policeman and murdered him with a single shot to the head – he did not even pause to take the shot.

These are professionals.

They cried out "we have avenged the prophet, we have killed Charlie Hebdo" as they conducted their murder spree against the French satirical magazine.

Their use of weapons – close groups of bullet strikes in the windscreen of a police car – was skilful.

An AK-47 kicks up. It takes practice to keep it under control, and skill to hit moving targets in the way they have.

They apparently struck when the magazine was having its morning news agenda conference.

They called out names of people they intended to kill in revenge for their publications of cartoons lampooning Islamic extremism.

They made their escape calmly, in a family saloon car and - so far - seem to have vanished.

This was not a lone wolf-style terror attack of the sort that we have seen with the murder of Lee Rigby in London, or more recently in Canada and Australia.

This was an infantry operation using classic techniques and tactics of the sort that only battle-hardened operators could have conducted.

They may have got their training and experience within the ranks of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

But they may equally be veterans of the insurgency against the US led occupation in Iraq, of the battlefields of Afghanistan, fighters from Maghreb and elsewhere in North West Africa.

They may be jihadists from Libya who have fought in Sinai against the Egyptian government – possibly even members of a Hezbollah death squad from the Lebanon.

French intelligence officials will be anxious to establish, though, whether for now they were operating alone or whether this was an operation that began at Charlie Hebdo but may not end there – modelled on the multiple attacks in which Pakistani militants struck three locations in the Indian business capital.

France has troops in action against Islamist extremists in North West Africa, it is also part of the coalition bombing campaign against IS in the Middle East, and its forces fought hard in Afghanistan.

Some 10% of France is Muslim. Among that population’s young, 40% are unemployed.

Disenfranchisement both politically and economically has made it relatively easy for extremist groups to recruit among French Muslims and it is back into the fringe elements of those communities that the gunmen may be hiding.

Their intent, in addition to attacking the magazine in revenge, will be to increase racial and religious tensions in France because a toxic atmosphere is oxygen to terror.