The Charlie Hebdo shooting occurred at 11:30 AM on 7 January 2015, when al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula sympathizers Cherif and Said Kouachi attacked the offices of the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris, killing 12 people and injuring 11. The strongly secular and anti-religious newspaper offended Muslims with its insulting depictions of Islamic leaders including the prophet Muhammad himself, and the Kouachi brothers were motivated to attack the newspaper for its jokes. The men burst into the offices of Charlie Hebdo and forced cartoonist Corinne "Coco" Rey to enter the passcode to the meeting room. They sprayed the lobby with gunfire upon entering, killing a maintenance man, and they proceeded to the second floor meeting room, where they killed several people - including cartoonists Georges Wolinski and Jean Maurice Jules "Cabu" Cabut and psychoanalyst Elsa Cayat (whom they had killed due to her Jewish faith) - while sparing another woman and telling her to read the Quran. They then exited the building and wounded policeman Ahmed Merabet, who they then shot in the head at close range after he said that he would not kill them. The brothers then made their getaway, hijacking a car near Crepy-en-Valois and fleeing to Dammartin-en-Goele, 22 miles northeast of Paris.
The brothers fled to an industrial estate near Dammartin-en-Goele on 9 January 2015, where they told a salesman named Didier that they were policemen; Didier knew that they were terrorists when they said "Leave. We don't kill civilians anyhow." Building owner Michel Catalano entered the building, and, knowing that the men wouldn't harm him, he made coffee for them and helped to bandage a neck wound which Said had received during earlier gunfire. Catalano was allowed to leave after an hour, but he thrice swore that there was nobody else in the building, although graphics designer Lilian Lepere was hiding in a cardboard box. Lepere texted the GIGN and provided them the brothers' location inside the premises, helping them to plan a siege. The siege lasted for eight to nine hours, and, at 4:30 PM, there were three explosions near the building. At 5:00 PM, a GIGN team landed on the roof of the building, and a helicopter landed nearby. The pair decided to run out of the building and open fire on the gendarmes, desiring to die as martyrs, and they were shot and killed. Minutes later, in east Paris, the perpetrator of the Porte de Vincennes hostage crisis - who was in contact with the brothers, was also killed.