Obama calls Hollande over Paris shooting

U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday afternoon called his French counterpart Francois Hollande to offer his condolences over the loss of lives in a deadly attack on the offices of a Paris-based magazine, offering American resources available for help.

In the phone call made on his Air Force One plane, Obama expressed "solidarity" with the French people following the " horrific terrorist attack," in which three masked gunmen opened fire with assault rifles in the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical weekly, and then exchanged shots with police in the street before fleeing by car.

Twelve people were killed in the deadliest attack in Paris since 1995, among them 10 journalists, a policeman and an economist invited by the weekly, and 11 others injured with four in critical condition.

In his phone conversation with Hollande, Obama "offered the resources of the United States as France works to identify, apprehend and bring to justice the perpetrators and anyone who helped plan or enable this terrorist attack," the White House said in a statement.

It said Hollande thanked Obama for his "words of support" and updated him on steps being taken to care for the victims and hunt the gunmen, vowing not to "waver when faced with such adversity."

Earlier in the day, Obama slammed the attack in a written statement and in remarks delivered at his Oval Office, pledging to provide the French with "every bit of assistance that we can going forward."

"I think it's going to be important for us to make sure that we recognize these kinds of attacks can happen anywhere in the world, " he said at the White House ahead of a meeting with Secretary of State John Kerry.

Obama said he and Kerry would discuss steps to protect Americans living in Paris, Europe, the Middle East and other parts of the world.

Kerry, in his meeting with Polish Foreign Minister Grzegorz Schetyna at the State Department, described the attack on Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical magazine, as "part of a larger confrontation" between civilization and those who are opposed to a civilized world.

France, the target of Islamist fighters in reprisal for its military strikes against Islamist strongholds in Iraq and the Sahel region, has foiled several terror attacks in recent weeks, Hollande said on the scene of the shootings.

Charlie Hebdo, which is based in Paris' 11th arrondissement, was firebombed in 2011, due to the publishing of a controversial series of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

In its last published cartoons, the weekly mocked Abu Bakr al- Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State, which seized major towns in Iraq and Syria.

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