WASHINGTON, January 8 (Sputnik) — The United States has yet to determine whether those responsible for the attack at a satirical Parisian magazine Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday had any links to an established terrorist organization, White House spokesperson Josh Earnest told reporters following the attack.
“We’re still trying to figure exactly…who is responsible for this attack in Paris, what their motivations are,” Earnest said. “But as a general matter we are very mindful of the threat from foreign fighters and the threat and the need to try to counter some of the extremist ideology that ISIL [the Islamic State] is propagating using some pretty sophisticated social media strategies.”
“There is no legitimate act of journalism, however offensive some people might find it, that justifies an act of violence, particularly an act of violence on the scale that we saw today. None,” Earnest said.
According to Earnest, the US is working closely with Muslim leaders who, around the world, condemn the kind of attacks similar to the one in Paris at the Charlie Hebdo newspaper headquarters.
US President Barack Obama spoke with French President Francois Hollande on Wednesday offering condolences to his country, and said that the United States was committed to offering resources to help bring the terrorists behind the attack to justice.
On Wednesday, three masked men opened fire at the Charlie Hebdo headquarters and killed 12 people, 10 of whom were journalists and two police officers. The magazine’s editor Stephane Charbonnier is among those killed in the attack.
According to various French media outlets, the suspects are Frenchmen of Algerian origin, ages 18, 32 and 34. Two of them returned to France from Syria in the summer of 2014.
Charlie Hebdo has been involved in other controversies involving radical Islamic fundamentalists. The magazine’s previous office was fire-bombed in 2011 after publishing controversial cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad.
