Survivors retrace a scene of horror inside the Charlie Hebdo offices

“Where is Charb? Where is Charb?” they shouted, using a widely known nickname for Mr. Charbonnier. Spotting their target, a trim, bespectacled man, the men aimed and fired.

Then, witnesses said, they executed the newspaper’s chief cartoonists where they sat, frozen, before massacring nearly everyone else in the room in a hail of fire…

Sigolène Vinson, a freelancer who had decided to come in that morning to take part in the meeting, thought she would be killed when one of the men approached her.

Instead, she told French news media, the man said, “I’m not going to kill you because you’re a woman, we don’t kill women, but you must convert to Islam, read the Quran and cover yourself,” she recalled.

“After,” she added, he left shouting, “Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar!”