Second hostage crisis emerges in eastern Paris

French elite forces surrounded two brothers suspected of slaughtering 12 people in the terrorist attack at Charlie Hebdo as a fresh hostage drama erupted at a supermarket Friday in eastern Paris.

Members of the French gendarmerie intervention forces arrive at the scene of a hostage taking at an industrial zone in Dammartin-en-Goele, north-east of Paris. The two main suspects were sighted and aShow more

PARIS // French elite forces surrounded two brothers suspected of slaughtering 12 people in the terrorist attack at Charlie Hebdo as a fresh shooting and hostage drama erupted at a kosher supermarket Friday in eastern Paris.

Snipers were deployed on roofs and helicopters swooped low over a small printing business in the town of Dammartin-en-Goele, only 12 kilometres from Paris’s main Charles de Gaulle airport.

And in the east of the French capital, a man and a woman already suspected of gunning down a policewoman on Thursday was thought to be behind a new attack on the kosher grocery store.

Police sources said one person was seriously wounded in the stand-off at the grocery store, while the interior ministry denied earlier reports that two people had been killed.

The attackers were identified as Amedy Coulibaly, 32, and Hayat Boumeddiene, 26, and are considered “armed and dangerous”.

The Porte de Vincennes area in eastern Paris was locked down with people told to stay indoors and police streaming into the streets.

Police sources said there was a “connection” between Coulibaly, and the brothers accused of carrying out France’s bloodiest massacre in half a century at the Charlie Hebdo offices.

The massive manhunt for the two brothers, Cherif and Said Kouachi, appeared to be approaching a dramatic climax as security forces laid siege to the CDT printing business in Dammartin-en-Goele.

Ahead of the stand-off, police had already exchanged fire with the pair in a high-speed car chase. Prosecutors said there had been “no casualties reported” in the immediate aftermath of the shoot-out.

One witness described coming face-to-face at the printer’s with one of the suspects, dressed in black, wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying what looked like a Kalashnikov.

The witness told France Info radio that the man said: “’Leave, we don’t kill civilians anyhow’.”

Schools nearby Dammartin-en-Goele were evacuated and residents barricaded themselves indoors as the hostage drama unfolded.

One 60-year-old choked back tears as she said how elite forces burst into the shop where her daughter works and ordered them to take cover.

“My daughter told me: ‘Don’t be scared mummy, we’re well protected. She was calm but me, I’m scared. I’m really scared,” said the woman.

Before the stand-off, the suspects had hijacked a Peugeot 206 nearby from a woman who said she recognised them as the brothers, Cherif and Said Kouachi, accused of killing 12 people in Wednesday's attack on the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, which repeatedly lampooned the Prophet Mohammed.

President Francois Hollande rushed to the interior meeting to be briefed on the situation as prime minister Manuel Valls declared that France was at “war” with terrorism, but “not in a war against religion.”

“It will without doubt be necessary to take measures” to respond to the terrorist “threat,” he said.

Two Air France planes were forced to abort their landing at Paris’s main Charles-de-Gaulle airport and go around again ‘due to the presence of helicopters ... flying over the zone at low-altitude,” the airline said.

The spectacular endgame came as it emerged the brothers had been on a US terror watch list “for years”.

And as fears spread after the attack, the head of Britain’s domestic spy agency MI5 warned that militants were planning other “mass casualty attacks against the West” and that intelligence services may be powerless to stop them.

Wednesday's bloodbath at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris has sparked a global chorus of outrage, with impromptu and poignant rallies around the world in support of press freedom under the banner "jesuischarlie".

US President Barack Obama was the latest to sign a book of condolence in Washington with the message “Vive la France!” as thousands gathered in Paris on a day of national mourning Thursday, and the Eiffel Tower dimmed its lights to honour the dead.

And as a politically divided and crisis-hit France sought to pull together after the tragedy, the head of the country’s Muslim community — the largest in Europe — urged imams to condemn terrorism at Friday prayers.

In a highly unusual step, President Francois Hollande was due to meet far-right leader Marine Le Pen at the Elysee Palace later Friday, as France geared up for a “Republican march” on Sunday expected to draw hundreds of thousands.

French authorities raised the security alert to the highest possible level in the region of Picardy, to the north-east of Paris, as forces tightened their noose on the brothers, Cherif Kouachi, 32 and Said, 34.

Around 24 hours into the manhunt, the brothers were identified after holding up a petrol station 80 kilometres from Paris.

Helicopters buzzed overhead during the night and paramilitary forces were preparing to step up their house-to-house searches.

As heavily armed crack units swarmed through the normally tranquil countryside villages, residents voiced their nervousness.

“I don’t understand: the police are dressed like Robocops in the streets, but they let us move about freely. What if we came face-to-face with them, what do we do?” asked one woman, who gave her name as Carole.

Mr Cazeneuve announced that a total of 88,000 security forces were mobilised across the country and that an international meeting on terrorism would take place in Paris on Sunday.

Nine people had already been detained as part of the operation, he said.

* Agence France-Presse