French police have identified three suspects for the massacre of 12 journalists and police at the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo as the manhunt to track then down continues.
Brothers Said Kouachi and Cherif Kouachi are believed to be French nationals of Algerian descent aged in their early 30s. Their accomplice was named as 18-year-old Hamyd Mourad, whose nationality was unclear.
The men are linked to a Yemeni terrorist network, officials said, but would not confirm whether that group was al-Qaeda.
A special police assault team surrounded a building in a council estate in Reims in northern France tonight, where at least two of the suspects were believed to be hiding.
“We are going in soon. Either there is going to be a shoot out or they have got away, tipped off by social media,” an officer told the French news agency AFP.
Scores of officers from the raid assault squad had surrounded the building in Reims – the home town of the youngest of the three suspects. Police were ordering journalists and members of the public to clear the area.
The interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said three men were being hunted and said “all the means” had been mobilised to “neutralise the three criminals who have committed this barbaric act”.
He added that the operation will take place as quickly as possible in order to “identify the aggressors and arrest them in a way that they will be punished with the severity that corresponds to the barbaric act they have committed”.
The masked attackers, armed with automatic rifles, were heard shouting “Allahu Akbar” - God is great - as they stormed the office before opening fire in an editorial meeting.
Footage showed them shouting in French “we have killed Charlie Hebdo -we have avenged the Prophet Mohamed,” in an apparent reference to the magazine’s publication of controversial cartoons depicting the Muslim prophet.
Witnesses said the gunmen claimed to be part of terrorist group Al Qaeda in Yemen and asked for cartoonists by name before murdering them.
The gunmen fled eastwards towards the Paris suburbs, dumping their car in a residential area, police said. They then hijacked another car before running over a pedestrian and disappearing.
“There is a possibility of other attacks and other sites are being secured,” police union official Rocco Contento said.
Eight journalists, a guest and two police officers were killed, said Paris prosecutor Francois Molin. Eleven more were injured, including four who are in a critical condition.
Footage taken by terrified witnesses from windows and on rooftops overlooking the scene showed the terrorists shooting one of their victims, a police uniform at point-blank range as he lay injured on the pavement.
The Times reported that the injured police officer, who was lying on the ground, said to one of the gunmen: “Do you want to kill me?” The man replied “OK, chief” and then shot him dead.
Corinne “Coco” Rey, a Charlie Hebdo cartoonist, told French newspaper L'Humanite: “I had gone to collect my daughter from day care and as I arrived in front of the door of the paper's building two hooded and armed men threatened us. They wanted to go inside, to go upstairs. I entered the code.
"They fired on Wolinski, Cabu...it lasted five minutes... sheltered under a desk...They spoke perfect French...claimed to be from Al Qaeda."
Prominent cartoonists Jean Cabut, the magazine’s artistic director, Stephane Charbonnier, its editor, and Bernard "Tignous" Verlhac were among the dead.
The massacre was France's deadliest terror attack in at least two decades and prompted condemnation from world leaders including David Cameron and Barack Obama, alongside journalists and free speech campaigners.
A member of the unit told journalists at the scene of the operation to remain “vigilant” as there was going to be “a showdown” and the suspects might escape the building, the AFP news agency reported.
Security forces had been searching for the attackers, who fled in a Citroen hatchback that is being examined by forensics teams after being dumped. A police source told Reuters that one of the three suspects had been identified because his identity card was left in the getaway car.
By Lizzie Dearden, John Lichfield
