French police have staged simultanueous assaults on the sites of both hostage situations near Paris, where the two gunmen suspected of carrying out a deadly attack at Charlie Hebdo magazine were believed to be hiding at a printworks and a third gunman had taken hostages at a kosher supermarket. Early media reports suggest that all three gunman have been killed, although this has not been confirmed by authorities.
A manhunt for two suspects, brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, wanted in the shooting attack Wednesday that left ten journalists and two police officers dead, converged in the town in Northern France on Thursday morning after a car chase. A massive police presence surrounded an industrial building where the suspects were believed to be hiding with at least one hostage, thought to be the manager of the printworks.
The manhunt began shortly after two men entered the offices of French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday at 11:30 am local time, and started killing staff members. The men escaped the crime scene in a getaway car, then hijacked a second car later on in the day. They are believed to have been heavily armed.
Police were also dealing with a hostage standoff in a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris where a gunman reportedly took at least five hostages, who have reportedly been freed after police stormed the building, though some reports indicate four hostages died.
Several explosions were heard, as well as gunfire and Sky News showed footage of a huge amount of police activity in the area minutes after, with ambulances and police vans arriving. Police then blocked off the roads surrounding and locked down local schools, before telling local shops to close up too. Police hacked into the CC-TV system of the shop, it is currently being checked for boobytraps.
There were later reports that the hostage taker said he will kill hostages if French police storm the building where the Kourachi brothers, responsible for Wednesday’s attack on Charlie Hebdo, who were holed up in an industrial area near Dammartin-en-Goele, northeast of Paris. There are reports that the brothers have now been killed after police stormed the building .
It’s believed that the gunman is the same one who was involved in the fatal shooting of a policewoman who was killed on Thursday morning in the city.
The AFP Photo Department tweeted this photo appearing to show five hostages freed from the siege, although police sources have now said that four hostages have died:
Several hostages freed at Jewish supermarket in Paris. Photo Thomas Samson #AFPpic.twitter.com/C9ltgMT0Wl
— AFP Photo Department (@AFPphoto) January 9, 2015
The suspects in the Charlie Hebdo shooting, Cherif and Said Kouachi, ages 32 and 34, were born in Paris and grew up in an orphanage, They claimed affiliation with Al Qaeda's faction in Yemen before the shooting, which they said was to avenge the Prophet Muhammed. A cartoon version of Muhammed was depicted in the magazine several times, which angered some in the Muslim community, as depictions of the Prophet are considered blashphemous. Experts are concerned that if the suspects were indeed part of a terrorist cell linked to the Yemeni affiliate of Al Qaeda, this would signal a worrying change in tactics for the terrorist organization.
This story is developing and will be updated as more information becomes available.
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