Paris suspect says wanted to go after Charlie Hebdo

PARIS: The man believed to have attacked and wounded two people with a meat cleaver on Friday is cooperating with the police and said he had targeted weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo, a police source told Reuters. The attack took place in front of a building where militants gunned down employees of Charlie Hebdo in 2015 because of the republication of blasphemous cartoons. A suspected accomplice of the attacker was released in the early hours of Saturday while another person close to the suspected attacker and who could had been his former roommate in a hotel north of Paris has been arrested. By midday Saturday, seven people remained in custody including the suspected attacker. Police quickly detained the man suspected of carrying out the attack next to the steps of an opera house about 500 metres away. The suspected attacker was from Pakistan and arrived in France three years ago as an unaccompanied minor, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said.