Huddled together for warmth amid cardboard boxes of food, these pictures show terrified shoppers hiding in a freezer during the armed siege of the Kosher deli in Paris.
One woman is seen cradling her child, while in another image a hostage sends a text message to a loved one.
Above them crazed fanatic Amedy Coulibaly was in a standoff with police, having stormed the Hyper Cacher in the Porte de Vincennes area of the city, taking 19 hostages and shooting three of them dead on the spot.
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Terror: This image, taken by one of the hostages themselves, shows the scene inside a freezer where shoppers feared for their lives as an Islamist gunman took control of a kosher deli in Paris. One woman is seen clutching a baby as they huddle together for warmth
Final words: Hostages quietly huddled around cardboard boxes, some texting goodbye messages to family they feared they would never see again. One of the trapped hostages even managed to joke: 'We’ll open a bottle of wine. Here, there are plenty'
Horror: One photo taken by the hostages showed bodies and blood inside the main area of the supermarket, where four hostages died
Hearing shots, shoppers at the back of the store fled downstairs to the storeroom where they huddled together in temperatures of -3C (27F). Fearing they would not escape alive, they made what they believed would be their last calls to family to tell them they loved them.
One man, known only as Ilan, was with his young son and quickly removed his jacket and wrapped him in it as they cowered in freezer for nearly five hours.
The pictures from inside the storeroom were made public as the hostages came forward to give dramatic accounts of their ordeal on Friday.
Stories of incredible bravery and heroism emerged, including that of 22 year-old store worker Yohan Cohen, who was executed by Coulibaly when he tried to grab the fanatic’s gun, and Lassana Bathily who ushered the shoppers to the freezer, undoubtedly saving their lives.
Mr Bathily, a Muslim of Malian descent, guided the terrified group of men, women and at least two young children, to the walk-in freezer in the basement.
He said: ‘I turned off the lights and the fridge. I closed the door and told them to keep quiet.’ Mr Bathily then slipped away using a goods lift and was able to provide police with valuable information about what has happening inside the store.
Freedom: Some of those pictured inside the freezer later walked to safety outside the supermarket, escorted by armed French police
Frightened: Some of the 20 people inside the supermarket when it was raided by the extremist gunman on Friday had children with them
Bloody end: This was the moment police stormed the supermarket, killing fanatic Amedy Coulibaly who had an AK-47 and a bulletproof vest
One shopper who gave his name only as Mickael B, was making his way to the checkout when he heard a loud bang. ‘I thought it was a firecracker at first. But turning I saw a black man armed with two Kalashnikov rifles and I knew something bad was happening,’ he said.
‘I grabbed my son by the collar and fled to the back of the store. There, with other customers, we ran down a spiral staircase into the basement. We all piled into one of two cold rooms. Our door wouldn’t close. We were terrified.’
A woman, who was also in the freezer and who gave her name as Debroah, said she had gone to the deli to buy food to mark the Sabbath, as she did every Friday. ‘We hid ourselves behind cartons of children’s milk,’ she said.
‘There were two men with me – one had his three-year-old son with him – and maybe two women, also a baby. There were perhaps five or six of us. The father did everything he could to protect his son, keep him warm and also reassure the rest of us. He was the bravest of us all.’
However, Coulibaly soon discovered their whereabouts. Mickael B said: ‘A store employee was sent down by the killer. She said he had said we were to go back up otherwise there’d be carnage. I refused to go up.
Safety: The end of the siege played out live on 24-hour news channels and social media as armed police brought the survivors to safety
Departure: Many of those involved in the stand-off were in tears. Other customers had been able to flee before the metal shutters came down
Guard: The incident happened at the same time as the Kouachi brothers responsible for the Charlie Hebdo massacre were in a separate siege
'By now my son, understanding nothing, was panicking. Then, minutes later, the employee comes back down with the same message. This time I decided to follow her up the spiral staircase. At the top, a man was dying in a pool of his own blood.
‘The terrorist introduced himself to us. He was strangely calm. “I am Amedy Coulibaly, Malian and Muslim. I belong to the Islamic State,” he told us.’
It was at this point that Mr Cohen tried to intervene. Mickael B said: ‘Suddenly [someone] tried to grab one of his guns which he’d left on the counter. It wasn’t working. The terrorist had put it there because it had blocked after the first shots,’ Mickael told Le Point magazine.
‘He turned and shot at the customer, who died on the spot.’
Mickael said he was then ordered by Coulibaly to switch on his phone and to call the media.
On alert: French police continued to stand guard outside the supermarket after the incident. Extremist Couilably spoke to French TV before his death, claiming to justify his actions and saying he had targeted the shop because it was Jewish. He added he was working with the Kouachis
Thug: Islamist extremist Amedy Coulibaly was killed during the storming of the deli, where he rounded up hostages and taken their phones
Coulibaly spoke to French television channel BFM TV, justifying his actions and said that he was working with the Kouachi brothers, who had killed 12 at the Charlie Hebdo offices and were holding a hostage at a factory in Dammartin, 28 miles away.
He also admitted he had killed the policewoman shot while on duty the previous day.
Secretly, Mickael then also called police. ‘A policeman told me that we should be ready to throw ourselves flat on the ground when the assault came, which would be soon,’ he said.
‘It was obvious that the terrorist was preparing to die. He said it was his reward. He had a weapon in each hand and boxes of cartridges nearby. He suddenly began to pray.’
It was at this point that the siege came to a dramatic conclusion and the hostages huddled in the freezer were freed. They were later pictured running from the shop, the look of horror clear to see on the face of one man as he sprinted from the scene clutching his young son.
HIS RAMPAGE STARTED TWO DAYS EARLIER - WHEN VIOLENT EXTREMIST SHOT JOGGER AND PLANTED CAR BOMB
Extremist: Amedy Coulibaly in a video released after his death in the standoff
Amedy Coulibaly began his terror rampage a day earlier than previously thought by shooting a jogger and planting a car bomb, it emerged yesterday.
The killer, who was shot dead by police after murdering four hostages in a Jewish shop on Friday, was thought to have struck first when he killed an unarmed policewoman last Thursday.
But now Paris prosecutors think he was responsible for seriously injuring a jogger in a suburb of the capital on January 7, the same day gunmen killed 12 during the Charlie Hebdo massacre.
A ‘martyrdom video’ of the fanatic, apparently filmed midway through the wave of terror attacks, appeared online yesterday. In it he urges Western Muslims to wage war against ‘enemies of Islam’.
The footage claims Coulibaly planted a bomb under a car on a Paris street, seemingly referring to an explosion on Wednesday night that authorities had not linked to the terror attacks.
Prosecutors said that tests on shell cases from the jogger shooting linked them to the weapon used at the kosher supermarket two days later.
The runner, who was attacked in the southwestern suburb of Fontenay-aux-Roses, has not been named but was left seriously wounded.
In the video, Coulibaly is shown sitting beside an AK47 and under an Islamic State flag as he declares that the terrorists’ actions were ‘completely legitimate’. ‘You cannot attack us and expect nothing in return,’ he says.
The slickly made film, which has been verified by intelligence experts, also shows the 32-year-old describing how he worked alongside the brothers who attacked Charlie Hebdo.
Separately, Coulibaly’s mother and sisters have condemned the atrocities and offered their ‘sincere condolences’ to the families of those killed.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2905736/Pictured-INSIDE-freezer-Kosher-deli-Terrified-hostages-cradle-child-send-desperate-text-messages-loved-ones-crazed-fanatic-standoff-armed-police-upstairs.html#ixzz3OYvfmfnF
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