The Islamist gunmen who killed 12 people in a murderous rampage against the staff of Paris’s Charlie Hebdo magazine almost did not enter the building – until they threatened a cartoonist returning to the office and intimidated her into entering the security code. 

Corrine Rey, a cartoonist at the magazine, was returning from picking up her daughter from daycare at the time of the attack, she told the French L’Humainté daily Wednesday night. 

“I just went to get my daughter from daycare,” Rey said. “As I got to the front door of the building, two masked, armed gunmen brutally threatened us.” 

“They wanted to enter, go up,” she continued. “I typed the code.”

Rey hid under a desk just outside the office during the attack and said she saw the gunmen kill fellow cartoonists Georges Wolinski and Jean Cabut. 

She added that the gunmen claimed to be affiliated with Al Qaeda and spoke perfect, fluent, unaccented French. 

Rey’s observation follows reports that French police have identified all three of the gunmen, and that two are confirmed to be French natives and nationals.