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Another police officer in Paris was killed in a shooting Thursday morning as a manhunt for two of the gunmen suspected in an attack on French satirical magazine 'Charlie Hebdo' continued. VPC
Suspects Cherif Kouachi, left, and his brother Said Kouachi, who are wanted in connection with an attack at a satirical weekly in the French capital that killed at least 12 people.(Photo: French Police via AFP/Getty Images)
Two brothers on the run after a deadly terror attack on a Paris weekly newspaper are "armed and dangerous," and could commit another attack, French authorities said Thursday.
France's prime minister, Manuel Valls said preventing the two suspects — Chérif Kouachi, 32, a convicted terrorist, and his 34-year-old brother Said Kouachi — from striking again "is our main concern."
Police believe the Kouachi brothers, armed with AK-47 rifles, stormed the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a publication known for its satire and provocative cartoons, on Wednesday, killing eight journalists, a visitor and a security guard while shouting "Allahu Akbar," an Islamic affirmation that means "God is great." Police say the men also killed another police officer and a maintenance person.
USA TODAY
French police hunt door to door for terror suspects
Alleged accomplice Hamyd Mourad, 18, surrendered to police late Wednesday. Paris prosecutor's spokeswoman Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre did not specify his relationship to the Kouachi brothers.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said in an interview on Europe 1 that police had arrested seven people overnight with possible ties to the massacre.
Cazeneuve said French intelligence services had monitored both brothers but did not have any actionable intelligence at the time of the attack. He declined to say whether the brothers had been inspired by or were working for a particular terrorist group.
"What I see is the mark of savagery, individuals who in cold blood murdered journalists and police," Cazeneuve said. "Whatever inspired them, the crime is barbaric."
Two masked attackers carrying machine guns and rocket launchers reportedly robbed a gas station 50 miles northeast of Paris on Thursday, prompting French authorities to investigate whether it was linked to the 'Charlie Hebdo' massacre. VPC
Chérif Kouachi served time in a French prison on a terrorism charge for his ties to an al-Qaeda-linked jihadist group. A Paris court in 2008 convicted Kouachi, then 26, for criminal association with a "terrorist enterprise." A judge sentenced Kouachi to three years in prison with 18 months suspended.
Kouachi and his brother are French citizens, born in Paris to parents of Algerian descent. Mourad's citizenship is unclear, but French news organizations reported that he attended a school in Charleville-Mézières near Reims.
USA TODAY
Paris attack: Universal values, universal outrage
Chérif Kouachi had left school and was delivering pizzas in the 19th district, a working-class eastern Paris neighborhood that is home to many families of North African descent, when he met Farid Benyettou, a street preacher, court records show. Benyettou, a devout Muslim who identified with the conservative Salafist movement, recruited young men for the "19th Arrondissement Network," which wanted to send them to fight for al-Qaeda in Iraq. Benyettou was convicted on terrorism charges and sentenced to six years in prison.
Prosecutors said the network recruited, trained and sent at least a dozen young French men to fight in Iraq for the insurgency. Police had arrested Kouachi days before he planned to leave for Iraq via Syria. Kouachi's lawyer said at the time his client had gotten in with the wrong crowd and reluctantly agreed to join the fight in Iraq.
Prison changed his former client, attorney Vincent Ollivier told Le Parisien newspaper in a story published Thursday. Kouachi became closed off and unresponsive, and started growing a beard, Ollivier said.
The time in prison, the lawyer said, may have turned him into a time bomb.
Contributing: The Associated Press
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