Charlie Hebdo editor Riss feared Islamists would return to kill him

Laurent Sourisseau, also known as Riss - who is recovering from the attack by jihadi gunmen Saïd and Chérif Kouachi that killed nine of his colleagues and 12 people in all - confessed that he had been convinced a second terror sleeper cell might come for him.

But Riss, who will co-run Charlie Hebdo with editor-in-chief Gérard Biard, pledged to return to "reinvent” the satirical magazine in the coming weeks even if it would be hard to replace the "extraordinary” talents of those killed two weeks ago.

He had jointly edited the satirical weekly with Stéphane Charbonnier, alias Charb, who was killed in the attacks.

Speaking for the first time since the attack, he recounted the moment the gunmen burst into the offices. "At first, I thought it was a radiator they had come to install and which had exploded," he told Le Monde newspaper. But he quickly realised "this wasn't normal".

"The door opened, a guy in black appeared with a machine gun. He came face to face with Charb," said the 48-year old cartoonist. "And then, I saw the others around me trying to look left or right, perhaps to find a way out. They were standing up. 

But I threw myself to the ground, face down. And from then on, all I heard were noises. And the noises in question were gunshots. Not shouts or cries, just gunshots."

He added: "I took a bullet in my shoulder but I think (the shooter) was above all going for those who were standing up."

He said he remembered the gunmen saying: "No, no, not the women." Then they approached Charb, who was no longer moving. He said he heard: "Yes, that's Charb, that's him for sure."

He said he had been at first haunted by the attacks. "I was pretty worried about the idea that the killers might come to the hospital to finish me off. I wondered whether there wasn't another sleeper cell tasked with finding the survivors," he said from his hospital bed.

"The first night, I heard a door slam and started wondering whether it would be better to hide in the toilets, even if this might a locked door might give me away, or in an unlocked cupboard hoping the guys might not look inside."

He said he hoped to have the strength to return to co-edit the magazine, but "not alone".

"We need to reinvent the newspaper," he said. "We must transform this ordeal into something creative. It's not easy. At the magazine, some people are finding it hard to get over this. Myself, I don't know whether once I leave hospital I'll manage to do it. We'll try at any rate."

(telegraph.co.uk)