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French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said that an operation is taking place in Dammartin-en-Goele to capture the brothers suspected in the Charlie Hebdo massacre.
Negotiations have started with the two suspects, a French newspaper reports.
Le Figaro has also revealed that two people are believed to have been killed and 20 others injured in a shootout earlier shoot out this morning.
A warehouse near Dammartin-en-Goele north of Paris storing building materials has been cordoned off as the two suspects are believed to be holed up with at least one hostage.
The developments came as thousands of officers continued the search for Said and Cherif Kouachi, aged 34 and 32, who police believe were behind Wednesday’s attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris that left eight of its journalists, two police officers and two other people dead.
Another police officer was killed in a separate shooting in Paris on Thursday, an incident the authorities are describing as a terrorist act.
Said Kouachi travelled to Yemen in 2011 and may have received training from an al-Qaeda group, a US official said on Thursday. Mr Kouachi spent several weeks in Yemen where he may have been trained at a camp run by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the terror group’s Yemen-based affiliate.
According to French media, this is at least the third time Cherif Kouachi has been wanted by the police. In 2005, he was arrested as part of the Filiere des Buttes Chaumont group, named after the leafy park in Paris’s 19th arrondissement near where they met to recruit jihadis to fight in Iraq.
Thursday’s search focused on the town of Crépy-en-Valois, where Agence France Presse reported that the suspects had abandoned their car, and Longmont, a village further east. The authorities deployed 88,000 police and troops around the country to beef up security.
The police have arrested nine people in connection with the gun attack on the magazine’s offices that stunned France and brought an outpouring of sympathy from around the world.
Vigils were held across the country for a second evening on Thursday at the end of a national day of mourning as the country struggles to come to terms with one of the most brutal terrorist attacks in the country in decades.
US President Barack Obama signed a book of condolence at the French embassy in Washington on Thursday, writing: “We go forward together knowing that terror is no match for freedom and ideals we stand for. Vive la France!”
Agencies/Canadajournal
