Newspapers also attacked in Belgium and Germany, EU and USA to increase cooperation

The editorial offices of the northern Germany newspaper Hamburger Morgenpost, which reprinted the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed from the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, became the target of an arson attack over the weekend. Police say no one was physically injured.

In Brussels, the editorial offices of the largest French-language daily Le Soir were evacuated after an anonymous telephone call threatened a bomb attack. The threat came at a time when more than 10 000 people were marching through the streets of Brussels in a "civic march against hatred and for freedom of expression" in response to the attacks last week by Islamist terrorists in Paris.

Agence France-Presse reports that a police spokesperson said the perpetrators of the arson attack in Hamburg first threw rocks and then an incendiary device into the office. The blaze "damaged two rooms but the fire was quickly put out", police said.  

Officers have arrested two people in connection with the attack, but the spokesperson would not reveal any more details. The investigation is ongoing.

The Hamburg daily had reprinted three caricatures from Charlie Hebdo on its front page after last Wednesday’s fatal attack on the editors of the French magazine. Islamists Chérif and Said Kouachi killed 12 people and a Muslim police officer during their attack on the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

Another terrorist, Amedy Coulibaly, then took the life of a young policewoman in the Paris area on Thursday and that of four other people in a Jewish delicatessen on Friday, where he also held 15 people hostage for several hours. Police shot dead all three terrorists on Friday.  

According to the German daily Bild, American intelligence services have listened to conversations of the leaders of the so-called Islamic State which imply that the terrorist attacks committed last week in France could be the beginning of a wave of assassinations across the European continent. However, no such specific plan is known of for the time being.

Margaritis Schinas, spokesperson for the European Commission, said the European reaction to the current terrorist crisis in France will not be influenced by fear, but will be led by reason. Schinas noted that yesterday the Interior Ministers of large EU countries directly influenced by extremism gathered in Paris at the invitation of their French colleageu Bernard Cazeneuve and agreed that the EU and USA must enhance their information-sharing and make better use of joint institutions such as Interpol, for example.