US shamed over diplomatic misstep at Paris rally; France probes spy failures
13 Jan 2015
Washington has acknowledged that it made a diplomatic misstep when it failed to send a high-ranking official to join world leaders attending Sunday's mass march in Paris.
Only the ambassador to Paris was sent, a decision that provoked ire in France. "We should have sent someone with a higher profile to be there," White House press secretary Josh Earnest said.
A woman who survived the siege told Europe 1 radio that she watched as a fellow hostage tried to snatch Coulibaly's weapon.
"A young man took the assault rifle and wanted to shoot him," but Coulibaly "was faster and he shot him in the throat. The poor young man just fell," she said.
She saw Coulibaly shoot a victim in the back. "Someone wanted to leave - he shot him in the back," she said.
The bodies of the four Jewish men who died in the attack arrived in Israel in the early hours of Tuesday and were to be buried in Jerusalem later in the day.
The funeral was to be attended by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, other top officials and members of Israel's French-speaking community.
Netanyahu visited the scene of the hostage drama at the kosher supermarket in eastern Paris on Monday to pay tribute to those who died.
As investigators look into possible intelligence failures behind the murderous attack on French magazine Charlie Hebdo and a supermarket that left at least 20 people dead, a debate is gathering pace over whether France's security bodies need greater powers to combat home-grown terrorism and the flow of jihadists back and forth from Syria.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Amedy Coulibaly, who gunned down a policewoman and four Jewish shoppers at the kosher supermarket, probably received help from others.
"We think there are in fact probably accomplices," Valls told a French radio station. "The hunt will go on."
Coulibaly had been on a US terror watch-list "for a while," according to latest reports.
