Islamist gunman Amedy Coulibaly who killed four Jews in a hostage-taking in a kosher supermarket in Paris on January 9, had targeted a Jewish school in the French capital’s district of Montrouge where the terrorist shot dead a police officer two days earlier.
Coulibaly, who was killed in an assault by security forces that ended the siege in the kosher shop in Porte de Vincennes, left maps in his car showing the locations of Jewish schools in Paris.
Jewish schools have been offered extra protection since the attack, including soldiers.
Catherine Hacoun, a director of the Yaguel Yaacov school in Montrouge, located close to the place where a 25-year-old police officer, Clarissa Jean-Philippe was killed by the gunman, told journalists she is convinced that the school was Coulibaly’s original target but he was thwarted by acar crash. “I have got a very strong presumption that he was on his way to the school,” she said.
An employee of a garage located at the scene of the shooting, who did not wish to be identified, said: “If you’re in a car with automatic weapons, you’re on your way somewhere.”
Some suggested Coulibaly might have decided to kill the police officer after noticing her uniform, or because he was afraid that he might be stopped with weapons in his car.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve has announced that army reinforcements would protect France’s 717 Jewish schools and places of worship from ant-Semitic attacks.