update that we have at least reportedly from the french ambassador here in washington from his verified twitter account, he said that the assault on the jewish grocery store in paris is successful and the hostages are alive and the terrorist has been killed. that is from here in washington. tell us what's happening where you are. >> what's happening here it all unfolded very, very quickly. it started early this morning and then sirens and police cars are racing. fire and smoke over the zone where the siege was taking place and now we learned that the brothers were holed up in the printing shop have been killed and the hostage has been

released. >> do we know how many hostages there were? let's get to how many people were in the print shop and then i will ask about the school nearby. >> we have been hearing conflicting reports of how many were in the printing shop. there was at least and we can confirm that one has been released. >> i'm going to ask you to stand by and continue reporting for us but let's go to chapman bell. outside the grocery store on the east side of paris, this was in a jewish community the day it started. the day before the sabbath and presumably crowded with people purchasing their breads and meats from a kosher butcher. what do we know? >> there was a hostage situation. it's unclear if the person inside the gunman or if it was

a multiple gunman that have been killed. there was a series of loud explosions and things are quiet. things were relaxing here after they put this away. now however there was a operation in place. you see police running up and down the street and focus on one area and they are on edge weapons drawn. there was one man they saw walking down the street and they stopped him and frisk them and it seemed like the hostage situation was finished it would appear they are still tense and their operations are ongoing around this area. they had a rather large cordon that they made and they expanded it and they have lots of searching to do. they are walking around with

flashlights and checking for anything else that could be in the area before they give an all clear. >> before they give an all clear, let's recap what we know. we confirmed that all of the terrorists have been killed. the two brothers as well as the terrorist in the kosher super market. the first word on that came from the ambassador here in d.c. from his twitter account, but that has been independently confirmed. we know that the two brothers have been killed. according to richard engle's information, the brothers were spotted in a separate room from the hostage. that's when the police came in and they came out and engaged the police in a gun battle and were killed. engle said the hostage siege is indeed over at the print shop and he believes there was one

hostage there and the french media are reporting three were injured and four injured in the super market raid. according to the french ambassador here all are alive. chapman bell was reporting the vigilance and the cordoning off of the area likely because there were two suspects who had been sought. one was believed to have been inside the super market. he met one of the brothers in prison. there was a lot of radicalization that took place according to french and british media as well as nbc information. he also had a partner. his living companion, the woman you see here on the left. she has not yet been arrested as far as we know. we can imagine that she is still on the loose and what french

police do not know is whether these two cells are the only cells and whether there were others trained in yemen as we know as the brothers have been and if there other plots afoot. jim cavanaugh is an analyst and hostage norther for the atf. this was a classic operation waiting until these brothers were exhausted and the host ajs were the prime concern. me what you imagined from your long experience. >> exactly. what happened is with the two teams like that at both scenes that are coordinated, if they can't absolutely be sure and they likely could not, that the people say at the jewish grocery could get media reports and text messages.

every person in there as a hostage might have a cell phone. they couldn't be sure they wouldn't know if something happened with the two brothers. they would have to launch at both locations if they had to launch at one. you are also looking for an advantage. you are looking for a slight advantage. at the scene with the two, did the brothers sprayed and you have to take one and then move? is it an emergency assault and then take the other? these two brothers went into a separate room and that's the advantage you are looking for. that's when you have to make your move. you make your emergency assault and the brothers might have run out an open door because they want to be martyrs and they think they will get a ride to heaven, but they are on the express train to hell really. they have to launch the assault and the team would overwhelm them with flash bangs and pinpoint fire and rescue the

hostages as well. >> joining us now, chief global correspondent bill neely northeast of paris near the print shop location. are authorities giving you any information there? we know you were there throughout and saw the smoke and the fact that there was an assault and we are told the hostages or hostage is safe. there may have been injuries but the two brothers are dead. >> yeah. at the moment andrea what we can confirm from police sources is that the two brothers here are dead. we were told that and that the hostage has been freed and there no reports at the moment from our sources that any of the police officers were injured, although there reports that officers were injured in the other incident. i suppose the big question now is, is this really over? i think in one respect the

answer is no. that woman that was on the french wanted poster is clearly still free and she was described as armed and dangerous. she was the partner of the man who was the gunman at the jewish super market. she has been a known associate for a long time. she is still on the loose. the second reason to be cautious and the possibility of copycat killings. these people were all connected 10 years ago. they were militants who were trying to recruit people and fight american soldiers in iraq. they have matured in the ten years into full-scale assassins, but the french authorities, especially low intelligence will not only be trying to put the jigsaw of what happened here together, they will be trying to

anticipate what might happen tomorrow not just because there is an armed woman on the loose, but also whether this might trigger more incidents. remember just before christmas, there were not one or two, but three incidents that police believe were lone wolf militants, in two cases driving vehicles and attacked police officers. there have been several incidents like this. police will be anticipating what happens next. >> and bill neely, there is no way that the french nor could the americans keep everyone under surveillance 24-7 who is on watch lists. there will probably be political blow back against the french government for not having followed these two brothers more

aggressively. >> yes, that's right and lost in the middle of the drama was a statement from the french prime minister who reminded everyone or stated we are at war. he said as a result of what happened in the last two days new security measures are now necessary. he needs to get that through the french parliament but the french feel they now need to ramp up surveillance and intelligence and security. whatever. you mentioned 24-hour surveillance and as i think you said a short time ago, that is not possible. not in the u.s. and not in france and not in the uk. we remember 10 years ago when the 7-7 bombings happened in the uk. authorities knew who some of these people were but it's not possible to keep track of everything they are doing 24 hours a day. similar to this case the people involved in the last 48 hours were known to french

intelligence. it was also known they were loosely connected ten years ago to al qaeda and a cell that was recruiting people. two of the guys spent time in jail. there were many like that in france today. don't forget there is a vast muslim community of five million people. most of those are peace-loving people and the imams say these people do not represent islam. nevertheless there jihadis here who french authorities will need to be keeping an even closer watch on in the coming weeks and months. >> our friend jeffrey goldberg tweeted and he is very deeply connected with the jewish community and and tweeted for the first time since world war ii the largest synagogue will not be holding sabbath services friday night and saturday.

there is real fear in the jewish community. bill if we can set the stage, we mentioned the large muslim community and this goes back to french connections and northern africa and algeria in the 70s and 80s, but in recent years, there is greater tension and a lot of recruitment from europe and france and from spain and great britain. no longer to pakistan and the main al qaeda, but through yemen and syria. that has been a training ground. we know a training ground for at least one of these brothers. it let to tensions with the jewish community and an exodus of well to do french men and women who have been buying property in tel aviv as a hedge. that historic concern about not being in their homeland. bill?

>> yes, that's right. i think the israeli authorities said just recently that the biggest group of immigrants in the last year were actually from france. there is a lot of fear of a rise of anti-semitism here. i'm not saying that is connected to the muslim community, but a lot of people are fleeing france. as for the muslim community here you know it's a toss up which country has the least integrated muslim population whether it's france or germany. many people would say it's france. there areas on the out skirts of paris that are virtually no go areas for the french police. ironically the policeman who was killed after charlie hebdo was a man on a bicycle was to integrate with the local

community and be a community support officer for muslim residents. he was the man who was brutally gunned down by one of these two brothers. the other problem is french foreign tell us in the last few years. france is dopeeeply involved not just in the war on isis and french war planes in the sky, but they are in mali with hundreds of thousands of troops trying to suppress the islamist insurgency. for many militants, it would be another trigger for their discontent another reason why they might see french police and authorities as in their terms as a legitimate target. this is something the french authorities will be looking out for and maybe that prompted

france's prime minister today to say we new security measures are necessary. >> thanks so much to you. we will be returning throughout the hour and have been watching pictures of the hostages being rescued and released from that kosher super market in a connection of paris in eastern paris near that connection. right now joining me from paris, a foreign correspondent for the daily beast. chris, you lived there for so many years. let's talk about the reactions with the french. the french are so adverse to the kinds of nsa surveillance and security requirements, but this is turning into their 9/11. perhaps not on the scale, but it is so unusual to have this kind of terror attack in paris. now the second incident and the third incident. it does seem as though this is

going to transform what the prime minister said. we are at war. >> the severity of this attack is a surprise to people. this is a long history of terrorism taking place in france. i think anybody who is middle aged will remember the bombing in the 1980s and they will remember the st. michelle station being blown up in 95. there have been a lot of incidents over the years. if you look around paris, they have the flimsy bags as public trash cans so you can't put bombs in them. people used to. there is all of that as background. nobody in france experienced anything like the carnage that took place at the charlie hebdo offices on wednesday.

they haven't seen what appeared to be this coordinated attack where you have the charlie hebdo attackers and the man who killed the police woman and who appears now to have taken the hostages in the kosher super market. it really is a shock. a real shock to the french people. i think the thing that scares them the most is the feeling presoisly that you were talking about that this is maybe just the beginning and not the end of the affair but this is symptomatic of problems that will get worse and worse. >> chris, are the french likely to put up with the security infringements and invasion of privacy that americans were willing to accept after 9/11? >> well yes and no. the french are very jealous of their privacy.

among other things they are jealous of privacy in dealing with private companies. everybody is afraid of the government spying on them and everybody lets google spy on them all the time. there is a resistance to all of that and acceptance of very sophisticate and pervasive apparatus in this country. you haven't seen protests in this country about the spying. with the protests in the fbi and the police department in the last two or three years, there is a lot of resistance to the surveillance they conducted. you haven't seen that here in france even though the communities are enormous. >> thanks so much and i am joined by chuck todd and moderator of "meet the press." the shocking event in france

really has gained a huge amount of tension here in the states. we have similar security and similar threats and we do not follow all the people on the watch list and the people on the no-fly list. the president and his advisers are facing a real challenge. >> the challenge is also public relations. on one hand i talked to a senior official who said i cannot go out there and say the likelihood of something like this happening here in the united states is very low. in fact this is what they live in fear of every day. soft target with lone wolf or a small pack. >> that was boston marathon. >> that was boston and what paris is dealing with. on the other hand, the larger issue here is how does america deal with muslim immigration and how does france deal with it. i can tell you what we are doing

is going live to dearborn and doing a piece. it is different. the largest population of muslim immigrants or second and third generation. this is -- we are a nation of immigrants. it takes time but we absorb them in ways that europe is struggling with. there differences. that is the one positive way to look at this from the american point of view of why they are less concerned. that doesn't mean it's not a concern. the idea of rising elements all over the country here is not for instance what france has to deal with. >> we should point out that the president is going to address the nation at 2:00 our time. it's late at night their time.

also at the elise had a meeting with advisers. >> in france we know -- >> germany is watching. >> this issue about muslim immigrants in france is the rise. the political impact on france i think the reason why your guest said it he fears he could get worse is because of the political fallout and the french population in general reacts to that. >> you were mentioning the muslim community in dearborn the first of the muslim members of congress you have jay johnson, the homeland security cabinet secretary who has gone to dearborn and gone to minnesota where there a lot of somali immigrants. he has been reaching out to the communities saying we want to partner with you. we need for you not to be. >> unfortunately one of the officials killed in france was a

muslim. >> community policeman. >> community police officer. the fbi made efforts to hire more muslim agents. we made the point over the weekend do some muslims get treated differently. the larger intent is to reach out to the community and integrate the community. >> let me ask you about domestic politics here which relate directly. i was interviewing john the other day and he said why would the president now want to take money away from homeland security and take $40 million and put it in his immigration proposal and trying to link these things. the other thing is -- >> it will go the other way. >> the guantanamo closures and trying to send some of these detainees who have been on a list trying to get congress to lift the restrictions and get them out of there because of the

president's commitments to close guantanamo. we saw the state department official quitting in frustration. >> by the way, the exclusive guest. a good point. we will talk about this issue. one of the three gunmen is radicalized in prison. obviously that's been one of the ways that some have pushed back on president obama saying hey, don't release these guys. they can be more radicalized than you realize and the return to action the return to the war is anywhere from 18 to 30% depending on the number you believe. they know for sure between 15 and 18%. they are worried about another 10% of the released detainees go back to the fight. does that slow down? we have seen public opinion on incidents like this the shift

between security and freedom and the pent lum and something like this that will lean to security over freedom. >> we want to reset with nbc's chapman bell who is outside the grocery store. chapman, we have been told by the french ambassador that the hostages are alive and the terrorist was killed in that assault. what can you tell us from the scene? >> andrea after the initial raid on the super market things remained tense. police seem to be operating and doing quite methodical searching on the area for something. there reports that there could be another suspect in the area who didn't get out. these are just reports, but that works well with the police out with flashlights looking around

the corners and being very -- people walking along. it seems like the raid has been complete and tension remains around this area. the police cordon remains in place. police officers still have their weapons drawn. some operations continue. you see them rushing around and shouting orders. i think it will be sometime before they can be clear from the area. andrea? >> richard engle joins us from outside the scene of the hostage situation involving the brothers northeast of paris. you can bring us up to date and recap? >> reporter: what we are seeing right now is the cordon has been relaxed here. traffic is flowing once again in this town. this small town very close to the international airport.

it was here the raid took place a short while ago. officials tell us the raid is over and the brothers were killed. french media is reporting that the french commandos who have been watching this industrial building a warehouse all day found the right opportunity when the hostage takers were separated from the one hostage who we are told is now freed and in good health. as soon as they were separated, they found that was the opportunity to act and burst in and the kouachi brothers were there. we were here at the time and we heard this was taking place as the school behind me that building was a school and there were about 100 students holed

up, barricaded in the cafeteria. as the evacuation took place, two explosions were separated by about five minutes and gunfire in between. that was the indication for us that the raid was under way. >> how common is it for some of these disaffected french men to become jihadis and have been trained in yemen? can you give us more context of how they can move back and forth? >> this country unfortunately does have a fairly large radical group. there millions of muslims and north africans in france and we are not talking about a problem of millions. over 1,000 french nationals or french residents have traveled to syria to fight with groups like al qaeda and isis and many of them have returned. hundreds have returned.

that is something that is of deep concern to france. many french are asking why. some of them believe it is because they have an open door and many of the privacy laws here because there is a large algerian population. the french are asking the question, why so many in france. it's not only france. the uk and france are neck and neck with the number of radicals who have been traveling back and forth. germany and denmark are all up there. it is not just a french problem. >> not just a french problem and we also know that there was a terror attack in belgium against a jewish museum. there is a growing attention between the jewish community feeling targeted by the radical muslim community and the muslim community at large, the larger community feeling very much

under siege from the french majority community. >> there was no coincidence this was an attack on a kosher super market. in fact the two brothers and we know quite a bit about the kouachi brothers. the older brother was the ringleader and more often getting into trouble. he served time in french prison. he said that his initial intent was to attack jewish targets in france, but that in 2005 he met a radical cleric who was a janitor with no real religious training, but he made himself a cleric. this individual convinced cherif

that he would be better off traveling to iraq and attacking u.s. troops there. he never made it to iraq and he was arrest and served time in prison. his prison time seems to be a key point in his radicalization. after he got out, cherif laid low. you didn't hear much about him. he was detain and he kept a low profile and more or less dropped off the french authorities's radar. his brother, said traveled to yemen in 2011 and receive months of training according to u.s. officials from the al qaeda french in yemen. now homegrown cell was mobilized and it attacked the french satyrical magazine and as they were on the run, barricaded themselves up here near the airport and caused a hostage drama. >> as we are speaking richard,

we are looking at new video we just got in of the people leaving the super market. there was a hostage drama there. unconfirmed reports that some of the hostages were also killed. we do not have that independently confirmed and in fact the french ambassador had tweeted according to his information the gunman was dead and the hostages were alive. we don't know what is happening in that super market as you pointed out. a kosher super market right before the sabbath clearly would be very crowded when this began friday morning in paris. richard engle, the other remaining question is whether there will be more incidents. as horrific as the original charlie hebdo incident was, it was a shock when the police woman was kill and the get away

took hostages at the print shop and the grocery store. french authorities do not know how many cells there and how many connections the brothers have. >> no. they thought it would be over quickly and the day after the attack on the magazine a police woman was killed. authorities claimed it was not related. that it was a separate incident all together. they were back tracking from that statement and police are mobilizing in this area but i can tell you the situation here is calmer than the one in paris. chapman bell was describing a short while ago. french authorities don't know how widespread this is. they thought it was over and the shooting of the police woman and we had this multiple hostage

taking one by the airport where i am now and the other in paris. the french are still looking for a fourth suspect. a woman. the wife of the man apparently killed in the super market. the french authorities put out a bulletin and a wanted poster for her earlier today. as far as we know her whereabouts are unknown and she was described as armed and dangerous. >> indeed. we just had up that wanted poster. thank you so much for your continuous reporting from the scene there. joining me now is angus king. senator, thank you very much. have there been any briefings as this evolved this week? >> we haven't had a formal briefing but we had a series of bulletins from the intelligence

community as recently as an hour ago. this is breaking so fast and i must say you have information that is even more recent than the briefing i received an hour ago. as you know this is developing moment to moment. there have been backgrounds. andrea andrea, this is a very serious problem for europe and also the united states. they talked about the jihadis and going into the mideast. there 15,000 foreign fighters from countries around the world that have been in and out or are currently in syria and iraq. it's the west point of extremism, if you will. these people are going back. in europe, you can drive from turkey to norway without stopping at a border and therefore it's easy to convey weapons into a place like paris

and that's why this is a dangerous and volatile situation. >> do you have any concern about the fact that the brothers were on the no-fly list and the watch list but that did not somehow trigger more surveillance by the french authorities? >> the good news is they were on the no fly list which means we were aware of them and they had a hard time getting into this country. in reading reports from the french intelligence they had to make decisions about resources. remember the number i mentioned, the 15,000 is not all in france. there so many people that have been in and out of this region it would be practically impossible to follow all of them. i can assure you that right now there are a lot of second-guessing and reviews of how the decision was made to no longer track these two guys that caused this problem. this is a deep problem. we have to figure out the roots

of this. in addition police and military and responding with force, we have to figure out what it is that motivates these unemployed 22-year-olds to sign up for the destructive ideology that is really no part of islam. they are using that as an excuse to commit violent acts. we have to talk about a broader long-term strategy and you mentioned in your earlier interview about dealing with the communities so that we have a better connection in the community where these people are and not just try to kill them after the fact. >> do you think this terror incident will in any way slow down the president's intention to continue drawing down from guantanamo and to eventually close the facility? >> i think you have to be thinking about that.

guantanamo i was down there about a month ago and it is a recruiting tool for these people. no doubt about that. on the other hand it's a secure facility. it's very expensive. the most expensive prison in the world by a factor of about 100. you can call it either way. as you were discussing a percentage of the people will end up back on the battlefield, but if it's a tool that brings in ten times that number that's the decision that the president and the congress have to weigh. i am that i frankly came away from my visit to guantanamo without a firm yes that we have to close it. the more you know the more difficult the decision becomes. >> thank you so much. angus king appreciate it so much. pete williams joins me from the newsroom. pete? >> a couple of things. first of all, u.s. law

enforcement said that the french police are searching for this woman. she was said to be an accomplice of the man who took the hostages at the kosher market. that's one thing that we believe is still at large. the second is you may recall that after the shooting at the paris newspaper, the french prosecutor said the two brothers who now we know have been killed at the print shop and an 18-year-old. they never said what is the disposition of the 18-year-old. that is unresolved. those are two points that come to mind right away. another is the thing that we have been talking about and i'm sure it will be the french equivalent of the hearings on how it was that the police decided to drop their surveillance of the one of the

two brother who is had a long history in france and known to have had terrorist connections. the prosecutor who was involved in the case at the time told us that they basically decided that they were no longer high priority targets and they had appeared to conducted a normal law-abiding life. that's one issue. that's a difficult and there is no satisfactory answer to that one. the second issue is going to be perhaps more difficult. in terms of you look at the u.s. situation, we have this same issue of trying to i'd how many to keep under surveillance. where the u.s. is focusing is trying to track people who go to places where terrorists hang out and give training. especially to yemen. it turns out that one of the brothers did go to yemen. they said he went there and fought with them and received

training and came back to france. that would be a huge red flag to try to track travel back and forth yemen. that's perhaps going to be an even more difficult thing for the french authorities to describe. how they didn't catch that. >> thank you very much. raising important questions. joining me now with their expertise, eugene robinson and "washington post" correspondent and bbc correspondent. thank you all and good to see you. gene you have been writing today about this. how the french are going to have to deal with it and how we should respond. >> how do we respond as a nation. my focus before the events of today was what happened. what we do as journalists and protection of the right to freedom of expression that obviously we care about deeply.

the question was raised as one published the images or does one not publish the images. one decided not to and the other decided to publish one image. the focus will be i think on whether we need to be looking for potential incidents like this in this country and a lot of focus on europe and a different situation in europe. >> you know the french spirit growing up in beirut. france has been so dedicated to free expression and democracy and french people have had what looks to be their 9/11. perhaps smaller in scale, but it is unfoaling and there may be other cells. there is this woman who is still at large.

they are going to be living in the climate of fear we all experienced. >> hopefully french society will be able to move on as well. we will see how they come together on sunday. there is going to be a march in paris with all parties coming together except for the right wing party. that will be an important moment. a lot of people are saying what we need to do at this moment is not come out and be anti-muslim, but come out and be pro free expression. pro freedom of speech. i think eugene raises interesting points. what are the limits of freedom of expression? are there limits when you are a journalist? the spirit was not actually a quote of his, but i may disagree with what you say, but i will defend your right to say it till death. there other instances where people have been sensored.

a french comic was seen as too anti-semitic and too provocative and his show was canceled last year. i think that's why the muslim community in france also feels that it is the target of specific cartoons that denigrate its faith. that's why there is anger. not justifying the attack but it is important to make the muslim community in france that does not condone these violent actions and they feel included as well. we have seen great comments coming from luz mihm clerics in france saying we have got to come out and make clear that these crazy people don't represent us. >> david cameron, the from the uk has just indicated he will be joining a unity rally at president hollande's invitation on sunday. there is a statement on facebook from the mayor of paris who is

expressing great sorrow to the jewish community because of the second attack. she is calling on all parisians to gather to act out in solidarity and pay tribute to our relatives and neighbors and colleagues and missing in this tragedy. i want to comment the work of the police and the emergency workers. you covered foreign policy for so many years and you traveled so often and you know how difficult it would be in paris to do the surveillance and do the kind of security that we have seen in cities as expansive as washington. >> absolutely. your reference a bit earlier to this being france's 9/11 is apt in just that example. 9/11 forced americans to think how vulnerable they are in daily life. that's something that america had grappled with before but not on that scale. france and paris in particular

have grappled with before but on a smaller scale. summer on the streets of paris now, there is evidence of the past terrorist threat the plastic bags for garbage cans instead of metal because people could throw bombs in there and they would explode and the shrapnel would kill a lot of people. that was part of the parisian experience but not a current day to day threat that people feel. certainly it's an enormous crowded city and a sprawling city. many of the disaffected lower and working class immigrants are relegated to the semi slums that is an incredible source of disaffection and decent within

paris. it's frankly a security problem for the country. >> that's also a geography that american visitors might not quite get when they go to paris. you go for the theme park and go downtown. on the periphery of paris, there these low income largely immigrant communities where people are struggling. there is a lot of energy and a lot of frustration. that sort of conflict and contrast is what we are dealing with. >> chapman bell is outside the grocery store on the east of paris. what are you seeing now? >> from the cordon where the police activity has remained quite vigilant we see the police search area that they focused on since the initial

raid went down they are congregating at the corner of the street. i'm a block away looking at it but they seem focused on something or someone. they are shouting and staring down the street that i can't see down but it's an area they have been focusing on. they have been searching along a fenced line with flashlights and shouting quite loudly at someone or something. even though the official raid is over it seems that their police operation is far from complete. they had this area on lockdown. they are now methodically looking, but as i said this one area of focus that they have been ggsoing around since the initial raid. >> we heard shouting and we can see a live picture of them

congregating on that corner. clearly they would be looking for forensics and looking for any conspirators and in particular for the partner who was the man who was the suspect the gunman inside the kosher super market who authorities say was killed. nbc chief global correspondent join joins me from the vicinity of the print shop. the latest there? >> things have calmed down here a great deal. planes are now flying back into the airport. they were suspended on one double runway earlier because the print work is close to the airport and there was gunfire and a siege going on. paris's or france's political community is beginning to come together. in just over an hour's time the

french president will give a national address on television. he said not only that france is in shock, but this is a test of the french people and he called on france to come together. he will be speaking in just over an hour. france's prime minister said france is at war and new measures will be necessary. the paris prosecutor and the woman in charge of all counter terrorist operations in paris will be giving a briefing shortly. she is the who may be able to provide the detail of the two raids. exactly what happened and upsetting casually figures we have been hearing and whether hostages have been killed and how many. the mayor of paris saying that this city is in mourning and saying that the jewish community

tragically has now been targeted as well as the community of journalism. to go back to where this started, remember the massacre was the biggest assault on western journalism going back in living memory possibly the greatest ever. many of france's key communities and many of the most well-known people. going back to the initial attack, those cartoonists were well-known across france. the aftermath is almost over but we should stress that the woman named as a companion that is armed and dangerous is still apparently on the loose. >> thank you so much. bill neely there near where this incident took place. kim, it's really unimaginable to those of us who spent so much time in france. france is experiencing this. there has been a lot of ethnic

tensions and arguments over immigration policy and you referred to the rising power of that right wing party. this is going to be a major political event. >> it will definitely be a major political confrontation and i hope it doesn't lead to a deepening rift in france between the 60 million french and six million french muslims. they are part of france and think that is a message that has been made clear by the president. it's important to remember one of the policemen who was shot in cold blood on the sidewalk was a muslim. i don't want to sound contrarian and diminish the gravity, but paris has seen the terrorist attacks in the past. >> all the way to algeria. >> there was a string of bomb attacks. what is different is that there is no demand. we don't know what the people really want. i think that is what is so

scarey and unknown about it. you were dealing with groups that had key requests. they wanted recognition and the plo and so on. there is a fear about the integration of muslims in france. i picked up a book and i was transiting back through paris and i picked up a book that just came out. the famous writer. it is fiction, but it's about a muslim president being elect said as the president of france. promotion of that book has been suspended. >> joining me now is terrorism analyst evan coleman. as kim was just referring to the difference in the way terrorists have evolved over these decades. one of the things about this experience is even before we knew it was al qaeda in the arabian peninsula based in yemen, there is really no difference between isis and al qaeda.

it doesn't matter really. there not specific demands. the groups are very different, but really there is a disaffect disaffected community and it seems as though it's violence for the sake of violence. >> isis two groups that hate each other put out nasty documents and videos calling each other clowns and among the constituents constituentscy that follows, the end result is murdering innocent people. one of the things we are waiting to see is whether or not as they did with the boston bombings as they have done with the massacre and elsewhere, whether or not aqap will issue a claim of responsibility either by saying they directed these individuals or provided the insightment and training. it's disturbing because the idea that al qaeda and yemen are

trying to recruit people over the internet. they want people who can't get to yemen to send us a recipe and we will tell you whether or not it makes sense and how you can improve it. you go and carry it out and claim responsibility on behalf and we will take credit. that's what they are telling people. not in arabic. in english. there is not a lot of people who are stupid enough to follow-through, but people do. people in the united states. we don't talk about it as lot and there have been dozens of cases here in this country who are involving would be homegrown jihadist who is got to the point of carrying out an attack and planning everything from trying to blow up a christmas ceremony in portland oregon and trying to blow up bridges in tampa and the brooklyn privilege at the financial center, these are serious issues.

no one of these have succeeded, but there people like this running around even here in the united states. it's disturbing. >> chris dickey from paris joins us as well. we expect to hear from president hold and president obama will make tronchs this horrible french crisis at the beginning of his remarks scheduled for when he arrives about expanding community college access for people here in the united states. for the leaders of the countries, we understand david cameron is coming to paris on sunday and we will have eric holder and jay johnson from homeland security coming to a crisis meeting on froons sunday.

>> it's not only about lone wolf attackers, but small attacks. it was thought that al qaeda was the main threat and al qaeda was a fairly coherent organization and they wanted to carry out another 9/11 and really wouldn't do anything that would be less than that. now they are looking to make their reputation by carrying out any attack they can. because they understand perfectly well that even if an attack fails for instance the famous under pants bomber or other attempts made to send am bo bombs. they make headlines and cause huge traumas and disrupt commerce. they realize that they have a lot of power and believe me, the leaders of the free world realize these guys have a lot of

power and they don't really know what they are going to do about it. they don't know how to eliminate these groups and how to answer the message in a way that will deter or persuade young men and occasionally young women from joining them. >> and as you get ready to cover a new presidential campaign here in the united states this puts foreign policy and counter terrorism front and center. >> for does and also the revisiting of the nsa debate from a year ago. that whole debate was premisesed on the idea that they need to have an enormous and deep network overseas that picks up famously european leaders and conversations and down from there. i'm really waiting to see what effect the french tragedy is going to have on what candidates

begin to say about that in the context of the american election. that whole network was born out of our 9/11 experience. it's clearly something about which the candidates will have to talk and probably disagree. >> initially supported strongly by president obama although he modified that somewhat to about 15 or 20 seconds left. >> to keep it into perspective, i don't think we should imagine that the conditions and the threat are exactly the same in the united states as they are in france. they are different. one thing that is different here is weapons are universally available. it is a good thing they are not the same. >> eugene robinson and jim coleman and chris dickey and

richard engle and chapman bell doing extraordinary work. that does it for this breaking news edition. troubling news and we will hear from the french president hollande and president obama. chris hayes picks up the breaking news coverage. >> this is live breaking coverage of the events unfolding in france. a tense terrifying shocking day in france today as not one, but two hostage crisises have played out starting this morning local time where the two brothers took a hostage in a printing factory near the airport. shortly there after, the man you see on the right apparently cook hostages in a kosher super market in a neighborhood in eastern paris. as of now, about an hour ago, it appears that french tactical units have raided both of those

different locations in the case of the hostage taken by the kouachi brothers and that press has been released. we don't know the fate of the hostages or all of them in the case of the kosher super market. we have seen reports that the gunman there is dead. we have a lot of information we learned about the nature of these three men and the woman who remains at this moment at large in the hour. we are expecting both french president hollande to address the nation with an update on what transpiredas well as american president barack obama who had a previously scheduled event in tennessee to discuss a new community college plan. he is also expected to address the events that have unfolded here. with me i have evan coleman who is an analyst and international affairs