'I knew he was there to kill me'

Hyper Cacher is a kosher supermarket like any you would find in cities across Britain.

The aisles are too narrow to contain the large families who come to do their shopping all together and, on a Friday afternoon, full of noise and people, there to pick up their last few bits for Shabbat.

Father-of-five Daniel Benhamou was doing just that when Coulibaly entered the shop.

He said: "I was already in the shop when Coulibaly came in. He killed one person immediately. Others backed away so they wouldn't be hit. I didn't see what happened initially because I had my back turned. When I turned around, I knew he was there to kill me.

"Some customers tried to take shelter in the cold stores below, but I stayed near the tills because I wanted to leave. I hadn't yet seen that he had killed someone, I wasn't yet filled with terror. I thought I still had a chance to escape.

"Then his weapon jammed, which gave us time to get out. I was with one other. Coulibaly tried to shoot us while we were outside, he missed me but injured the other person."

On Friday afternoon a Parisian arts student was having lunch with her boyfriend at his university when she received a phone call. Minutes later, she was running through the streets of Paris.

"My boyfriend's mother called to tell me there was an attack at Hyper Cacher because she knew I lived nearby," said Yona Draï, 19.

"I immediately thought of my mother who does her Shabbat shopping there. I rang her but she didn't answer so I started to run home.

"Eventually she answered and said she had been on her way to the supermarket but was delayed because she got a phone call and had stopped to chat."

That call may have saved Mrs Draï's life, but others were not so lucky.

In all, Amedy Coulibaly shot dead four Jews and held 15 others hostage for several hours.

He had gone to the store wearing a bullet-proof vest and was heavily armed, carrying two guns and 15 sticks of dynamite.

He killed François-Michel Saada, 63, and Philippe Braham, 45, as he entered the store. Yoav Hattab, 21, died as he struggled to disarm him of his Kalashnikov rifle.

Ms Draï waited outside with the crowd at the police cordon around the store.

She said: "We were there from 2pm. At around 4pm the police made the cordoned-off area bigger so we went back to our apartment. At around 5pm we heard three massive booms. Then we saw people running out of the store, it was chaos."

One survivor, named only as Mickael, was in the shop with his three-year-old son to buy chicken and bread when he heard an explosion as he was queuing to pay.

"I thought it was a firecracker at first," he said. "Then turning round and seeing a black man armed with two Kalashnikovs, I realised what was happening.

"I took my son by the collar and I led him to the back of the shop where we took a winding staircase leading to the basement."

Muslim employee Lassana Bathily helped Mickael and other customers to hide in the cold stores. One Belgian woman wrapped her 11-month-old baby in a coat to keep warm.

Coulibaly ordered one of the women hostages to lower the shutters. Then, he sent her downstairs to tell them he would start killing people if they did not come out.

Mickael said: "We went back up the winding staircase where there was a man at the top, dead, in a pool of blood. The terrorist introduced himself to us. He was strangely calm. 'I am Amedy Coulibaly, Malian and Muslim. I belong to Islamic State'. Then he asked us to put our telephones on the floor."

Coulibaly was in contact with the police and demanded to speak to French President Francois Hollande and Prime Minister Manuel Valls, as well as asking for the Kouachi brothers - the terrorists behind the Charlie Hebdo attack - to be freed.

At one point, when he was distracted, Mickael managed to retrieve his phone and call the police.

Yoann Cohen, a Hyper Cacher employee, noticed that Coulibaly had left a gun on the counter.

He did not realise it had been discarded because it was faulty. He grabbed it and pulled the trigger. When it did not fire, Coulibaly spun round and shot him dead.

A short time later the shutters of the shop were raised and the police assault began. It was over in minutes.

Ms Drai said: "We were shocked but we knew something like this was coming. France underestimated the threat - Coulibaly had already been to prison.

"I knew Yoann Cohen. He was very sweet, very kind and reserved, but a bit shy. He always put the needs of everyone else before his own."

She said that after a series of attacks on French Jews - the murder of shop assistant Ilan Halimi , the murder at a Toulouse school and the attacks on synagogues - the community was left with a stark choice: stay or leave.

"My boyfriend and I have decided that once we have finished our studies we will go to Israel. I don't feel at all safe," she said.

There were also two Jewish victims of the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices. Veteran cartoonist Georges Wolinski, and satirical columnist Elsa Cayat were shot dead by the Kouachi brothers.