Three black-clad gunmen shouting “Allahu Akbar!” stormed the Paris offices of a satirical publication known for lampooning Islam Wednesday, killing 12, including its editor, three political cartoonists and a police officer whose cold-blooded murder at close range was captured on a disturbing video.

The masked, Kalashnikov-toting shooters moved with military precision, and then escaped following the 11:30 a.m. attack at Charlie Hebdo, the publication known for challenging Muslim terrorists with a 2011 caricature of Prophet Muhammed on its cover and which recently tweeted a cartoon of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and were being sought.

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Ukraine and pro-Russian rebels were on Dec. 27 set to complete a swap of hundreds of prisoners as part of a new push for peace that came despite Kiev’s decision to cut off key transport links to breakaway Crimea.

The exchange began Dec. 26 on a dark and isolated stretch of a road north of the devastated eastern rebel stronghold of Donetsk, and unfolded as negotiators from both sides held video talks on Skype at reviving stalled negotiations.

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Andriy Lysenko, spokesman for the Ukrainian military, said on Thursday that three soldiers had been killed in attacks by pro-Russian militants in the past 24 hours.

“We lost three soldiers and another eight were wounded in the past 24 hours,” said Lysenko, adding there had been 22 breaches of the truce since a ceasefire - which began with a “Day of Silence” on Tuesday - was introduced.

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Well drilled: The fighters hold their weapons in formation at their training camp just outside Donetsk

Hundreds of fighters from the Russian republic of Chechnya have formed their own ‘Death Battalion’ to join the insurgency in east Ukraine.

The 300 or so volunteers say they are mostly former state security troops in the mainly Muslim region, where Moscow has fought two bloody wars since the fall of the Soviet Union.

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Gunmen stormed a building in Chechnya’s regional capital of Grozny on Thursday killing 16 people, including ten police, hours before President Vladimir Putin vowed in a policy speech to defend Russia against what he called efforts to dismember it.

Chechnya’s Kremlin-backed leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, wrote on his Instagram account that “six terrorists were annihilated” after they had opened fire at a police patrol car, killing three officers and then stormed offices housing local media.

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