John Kerry says there's 'rationale' behind certain attacks

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry with French President Francois Hollande.
(Image credit: Thierry Chesnot/Getty Images)

In Paris on Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry said there was "something different" about what happened at the offices of Charlie Hebdo in January and the Friday attacks in Paris, which left 132 people dead and hundreds injured.

"I think everybody would feel that," he said. "There was a sort of particularized focus and perhaps even a legitimacy in terms of — not a legitimacy, but a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow and say, okay, they're really angry because of this and that. This Friday was absolutely indiscriminate. It wasn't to aggrieve one particular sense of wrong. It was to terrorize people."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.