In the office of Charlie Hebdo, in Paris, after the killing of wednesday, 7th of January. DR / NO CREDIT pour Le Monde

Almost all of them were there, like every Wednesday, gathered around cakes and croissants, over the large oval table taking up most of the space in the editorial meeting room. It had been a ritual since the birth of Charlie Hebdo decades ago. On the left, as usual, Charb, the editorial director. Sitting next to him, the cartoonists Cabu, Wolinski, Tignous, Honoré and Riss, the journalists Laurent Léger, Fabrice Nicolino and Philippe Lançon, the economist Bernard Maris, and the columnists Sigolène Vinson and Elsa Cayat.

The meeting usually starts around 10:30 am, and quickly heats up, with many dirty jokes. The only taboo subject is the coffee machine, which never works. On the walls, some of the famous front pages of the satirical weekly : « Charia Hebdo », which had caused the arson attack of the newspaper's previous offices in November 2011 ; another front page about Marine Le Pen, head of the far-right party National Front, shown as a turd soiling a French flag ; a cartoon of the Pope denouncing sex abuse of children in the Church ; President Sarkozy with a painful grin...

The meeting is over when it is over - when it's time to go grab a bite at Petites Canailles, a nearby neighborhood café of the 11th arrondissement. That Wednesday though, nobody went to Petites Canailles. The meeting had been going on for an hour when two masked men entered the room, silencing the joyful hubbub. They were carrying assault rifles. One attacker said : « Charb ? », and shot him. Then both men shot several bursts. According to the survivors of the attack, they shouted « Allahou Akbar » (God is great) and « You are going to pay for insulting the Prophet ». They put a gun to Sigolène Vinson’s head , and told her : « We won't kill you, because we don't kill women, but you must read the Koran. »

In a matter of seconds, seven journalists and cartoonists were dead : Cabu, Charb, Tignous, Wolinski, Bernard Maris, Honoré and Elsa Cayat, a woman, wellknown psychoanalyst and columnist. Also dead : Mustapha Ourrad, the proof-reader, originally from the Algerian region of Kabylie, who had been granted the French citizenship just last month. Franck Brinsolaro, one of the two policemen in charge of protecting Charb since the November 2011 arson attack, was also shot to death, along with Michel Renaud, a former local official from the city of Clermont-Ferrand, who was visiting Charlie Hebdo that day, as a guest.

At 11 : 28 am, a few minutes before the killing, the weekly had published its Season's Greetings on Twitter : a cartoon by Honoré, showing Al-Baghdadi, the leader of the ISIS, wishing everybody “a good health” for 2015.

Honoré died a few minutes later with his friends, on the big oval table - the very spot where the caricaturists finish their last cartoons in a mad rush before the pages are sent for print, where last-minute choices about the front page are made, while everybody is cracking more dirty jokes. One of the survivors, Corinne « Coco » Rey, told the daily L'Humanité: « They shot Wolinski, Cabu… it lasted five minutes... I took shelter under a desk ».

A few minutes earlier, the attackers had killed Frédéric Boisseau, 42, a maintenance technician working on the first floor. Another policeman, Ahmed Merabet, who had tried to stop the killers, was first injured, then executed at point blank, on the nearby boulevard Richard-Lenoir.

The final count is twelve people killed, eleven wounded, four of them seriously. Philippe Lançon was shot in the face, Riss in the shoulder, Fabrice Nicolino in the leg. Simon Fieschi, the young webmaster in charge of dealing with the steady flow of insults the paper gets every day from the social networks and on the telephone, is the most seriously hit. « A slaughter impossible to describe », according to a witness who entered the room just after the killing.

The members of first response team on the scene discovered injuries looking like « war wounds »: « I've never seen anything like this in my whole career », says one of them. « We're trained for this - but seeing it in real life... » Christophe Deloire, head of the organization Reporters Without Borders, standing in front of the building, called this day « the darkest in the history of the French press ». It is also the bloodiest terror attack to hit France in over fifty years.

Dans les bureaux de Charlie Hebdo, à Paris, juste après la tuerie du mercredi 7 janvier. DR / NO CREDIT pour le Monde

The mist was cold and hard that Wednesday morning when the two killers dressed in black and wearing bulletproof vests first showed up at 6, rue Nicolas-Appert, two doors down from Charlie Hebdo's office. Apparently, they knew the exact day and time of Charlie Hebdo's weekly meeting, but they had the wrong address.

According to an employee at l'Atelier des archives, a company located in that building, they took advantage of the arrival of the mailwoman to storm through the door. They forced her to sit down, together with an employee who was in the lobby to get the mail. Then they asked : « Where is Charlie Hebdo ? ». They fired a shot that went through the glass door of an office. An employee sitting in that office came out and exchanged a quick glance with the two attackers.

Realizing they were in the wrong building, they ran out and went to the number 10, where Charlie Hebdo relocated last July. According to the Paris Prosecutor’s office, they met two janitors in the hall, asked where Charlie Hebdo’s office was, then shot one of them. They grabbed the cartoonist Coco, who was in the staircase, and took her as hostage. She tried to mislead them by taking them to the third floor - whereas the newsroom is on the second floor.

Since the 2011 arson attack, followed by countless death threats, Charlie Hebdo has camouflaged its offices. The signboard that used to decorate the entrance of the former office, now covered in soot by the fire, is hanging indoors, hidden from the street. The door leading to the newsroom bears no mention of Charlie’s name –just a generic name, « Les Éditions Rotatives ». The neighbors had also been asked not to mention that Charlie Hebdo was in the building.

According to an employee of Premières Lignes, a company sitting just across the hall from Charlie, the attackers, lost on the third floor, threatened a tenant with their guns and asked him the same question : « Where is Charlie ? ». Finally, they found the right entrance - a big, bulletproof door. At gun point, they forced Coco the cartoonist to type in the code that unlocks the door.

After the killing, both men jumped into a small black Citroën C3 parked on the street. A witness told the police he had seen a third man, who had arrived in the car but had left on a scooter.

Both killers then took the “Allée Verte”, a small side street. There, they meet two uniformed policemen riding bicycles. Shots are fired, but no one is hurt.

An staff member of Premières Lignes, who had fled to the roof of the building, took a video showing the street shooting. « Allahou Akbar » can be faintly heard between two bursts of gunfire.

Then, in the small rue Pelée, the attackers come across a police car. More shots are fired. On another amateur video, the attackers can be heard shouting : « We avenged the Prophet Muhammad, we killed Charlie Hebdo ! »

On the boulevard Richard-Lenoir, they make one last victim. Again, the scene was filmed by a random witness. The two men, still wearing their bulletproof vests, get out of the black Citroën and run towards a policeman lying on the sidewalk, wounded by a previous shot. « Do you want to kill us ? » one of the killers asks. « No, chief, it’s good », the policeman answers, but the hooded man walks by him and shoots him in the head, in stride. The victim, Ahmed Merabet, 42 years old, worked in the local police station.

The two killers calmly go back into their car, showing no sign of panic, acting very professional. The whole scene looks like an army commando training session. One man sits at the wheel, the other takes the time to pick up a shoe fallen from the car, before sitting in the passenger's seat.

« Lorenzo » (who wishes to remain anonymous) lives on the boulevard Richard-Lenoir. His window overlooks the sidewalk where the policeman was killed : « At 11:30 or so, I heard gun shots. I thought they were firecrackers, I looked out the window. There were a lot of police standing on the street, but also some people riding their bicycle, just like a normal day. Then, to the right, I saw a dark colored car, stopped in the middle of the street. Two black-clad men got out, wearing balaclavas and carrying black rifles. A policeman shot at them, they shot back, the policeman got hit and fell, screaming. He tried to get up, but he fell again, face down. The killers ran towards him. The one who got to him first shot him in the head. Then they both got back into the car. »

This time, the small black Citroen heads north. On Place du Colonel Fabien, a large intersection, it hits a Volkswagen SUV driven by a woman, but moves on. Then, rue de Meaux, a narrow street, its runs into a pole and stalls. The two men jump out in a hurry, leaving behind them an empty Kalashnikov magazine, some personal effects, as well as an ID card which the police will use to identify them. Then, they hijacked another car, a small Renault Clio, and flee again. The police lost track of them when they crossed the city line and drove into the suburban town of Pantin.

They were all there that Wednesday, for their weekly meeting. The few who did not show up that day are now in mourning. The cartoonist Willem heard about the tragedy when he was on a train from Britanny to Paris. His chronic distaste for office meetings saved his life. Zineb, a journalist, was on vacation in Morocco, her country of origin : « We were spared by pure chance, she said to Le Monde during a telephone interview. I just can’t realize yet that we will never see Charb again, or Cabu, Tignous, all the others… Almost all the cartoonists are dead. How are we going to manage ? »

>> Read our editorial : Standing free, together

(Translated into english by Yves Eudes and Damien Leloup)