‘Sea of Blood’ Inside Charlie Hebdo

Survivors of the attack on Charlie Hebdo said two gunmen left the magazine’s editorial meeting a “sea of blood.” The gunmen forced cartoonist Corinne Rey, who had just picked up her daughter from daycare, to let them into the building. Then they killed the building’s security guard and demanded “Where is Charb?” referring to editor Stéphane Charbonnier. Inside the editorial meeting, the paper’s chief cartoonists were shot where they sat frozen, and almost everyone else in the room was massacred in an attack that lasted “about five minutes,” according to Rey. A freelance journalist who had come in for a meeting says she was grabbed by one of the gunmen and told, “Don’t be afraid, calm down, I won’t kill you. You are a woman. But think about what you’re doing. It’s not right.” Julien Beaupé, who helped medics at the scene, said, “We tried to look away, because it was just a sea of blood. All the bodies were on the ground, there was gore on the tables....”