Charlie Hebdo Magazine Paris shooting Kills 12

According to a Paris prosecutor 12 people were killed on Wednesday as armed men stormed the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical magazine targeted in the past for its cartoons on Islam.

French President François Hollande has called the shooting a terror attack and described it as “an act of exceptional barbarity.”

Police said the men opened fire inside the magazine’s offices in eastern Paris using automatic AK-47 rifles before fleeing in a black car. At least one police officer was among the dead, according to the French president.

Charlie Hebdo has often put France’s secular dogma to the test, printing caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad on several occasions.

In 2011, its officers were struck by arson, hours before a special issue of the weekly—dubbed “Shariah Hebdo”—was published. Since then, the weekly moved to a new location, which was guarded by police.

The attack sparked shockwaves across France and prompted a tightening of security in the French capital. Wednesday’s shooting ranks as one of the deadliest attacks in the French capital since 1995, when a bomb exploded at the Saint-Michel subway station, killing eight.

After rushing from the Charlie Hebdo offices, the assailants escaped in a car towards north of Paris, according to a police officer at the scene. They ran into a police patrol near the Porte de Pantin on the city’s northern limit where they exchanged fire with the police.

The attack came on a busy shopping day in Paris with the start of the winter sales that typically attract large numbers of tourists. Security at press organizations, big departments stores, public transportation and places of worship will be immediately reinforced, said the office of Prime Minister Manuel Valls.

Mr. Hollande said several terrorist attacks have been prevented in recent weeks. “We knew we were under threat, like other countries in the world,” he said. “We are under threat because we are a country of freedom and [..] we will punish the assailants.”

Mr. Hollande said four people are “between life and death.”

The last tweet on Charlie Hebdo’s Twitter feed, posted Wednesday morning, shows a cartoon drawing of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi giving his best wishes for 2015. “Best wishes by the way,” the tweet reads. “And health above all,” al-Baghdadi is portrayed as saying in the cartoon.

It’s unclear if there is any link between the tweet and the attack. The veracity of the tweet couldn’t immediately be verified.

On the cover of this week’s edition, the weekly featured French writer Michel Houellebecq, whose latest book Soumission, in which he imagines a France run by a Muslim president, has stirred a controversy in France. “In 2022 I will do Ramadan,” the writer says in the drawing. The issue before that made fun of Mr. Hollande receiving a dog as a Christmas gift.