Kosher market killer Coulibaly buried near Paris

PARIS — The jihadist gunman who earlier this month murdered four Jews at a Paris kosher shop and held others hostage for hours before being killed by police was buried Friday near the French capital.

Police sources said the burial took place after Amedy Coulibaly’s country of origin Mali refused to accept his body.

The sources, who wished to remain anonymous, said Coulibaly — who also shot and killed a policewoman the day before the January 9 attack — was buried in the Muslim section of the Thiais cemetery in the Paris region.

His family had asked for him to be buried in Mali, but that country’s government refused.

The four victims of the Paris Hyper Cacher attack, from left to right: Yoav Hattab, Yohan Cohen, Francois-Michel Saada, Philippe Braham. (photo credit: Courtesy)

The two other jihadists who attacked Paris — Cherif and Said Kouachi — were buried last week in the towns where they had lived, respectively Gennevilliers near Paris and Reims in the northeast.

Both were placed in unmarked graves to prevent them becoming “pilgrimage sites” for extremists.

France unveiled a raft of measures Wednesday to curb radicalization and better monitor jihadists two weeks after the Islamist killing spree that sent shock waves across Europe.

Jitters from the worst attack on French soil in decades have spread to the country’s neighbors and the European Union promised a new counter-terrorism strategy would be ready by May.

As Paris scrambled to ramp up the battle against terrorism, four men were charged with helping one of the Islamist gunmen responsible for the January 7-9 shootings which left 17 people dead.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls announced more than 700 million euros ($800 million) would be spent over the next three years on “the fight against terrorism.”

The attacks by known Islamists exposed weaknesses in French intelligence, and Valls said some 3,000 people with jihadist ties needed to be monitored, adding that the number of people with links to “terrorist networks” in Syria and Iraq had soared 130 percent in the past year.

“The number one priority is to further reinforce the human and technical resources of intelligence services,” Valls said, adding that a draft law to do just that would be debated in parliament in early March.

The government is also targeting the Internet, with the creation of an informative website on radical indoctrination and more resources to monitor “cyber jihadism.”