French police seal off town as they close in on newspaper killing suspects

French anti-terrorist police sealed off a small northern town and helicopters hovered overhead after a police source said two men believed to have carried out an attack on a satirical journal took at least one person hostage in a small print works. Earlier, police had chased a vehicle at high speed along a main road […]

French anti-terrorist police sealed off a small northern town and helicopters hovered overhead after a police source said two men believed to have carried out an attack on a satirical journal took at least one person hostage in a small print works.

Earlier, police had chased a vehicle at high speed along a main road heading towards Paris as one of France’s biggest security operations in recent times unfolded. Gunshots rang out and the suspects abandoned their car in Dammartin-en-Goele, a small town of about 8,000 residents.

Police trucks, ambulances and armored vehicles descended on the area close to Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport after the suspects took refuge with at least one hostage in a building on an industrial estate, according to police sources.

Police quickly blocked all entrances to the town seeking to limit the scale of any siege and confine the suspects, French-born sons of Algerian-born parents. Residents were asked to stay off the streets.

The two suspects have been on the run since they stormed the Paris offices of the Charlie Hebdo weekly newspaper on Wednesday, killing ten journalists and two police officers in an attack that raised security fears across the world. The journal was known for its irreverent satirical treatment of Islam as well as other religions and political leaders.

Holed up in a small printing business in Dammartin-en-Goele, 35km (22 miles) from Paris, the gunmen reportedly said they were prepared to die.

Shots were fired during a high-speed car chase earlier on Friday.

Separately, in Paris, a gunman has taken hostages at a kosher supermarket in what appears to be a related attack.

A police source told France’s AFP news agency that five hostages were taken, and there are reports of multiple injuries.

Reports say the gunman in the Porte de Vincennes area is thought to be the same person who shot and killed a policewoman in Paris on Thursday.

Images of heavily armed Swat teams mobilising in the area around the apparent siege were broadcast live.

Chris Morris reports on from Dammartin-en-Goele where police have surrounded a warehouse

In the Charlie Hebdo attack, 12 people were shot dead and 11 injured. The suspects, two brothers linked by intelligence officials to militant groups, shouted Islamist slogans during the shooting and then fled Paris in a hijacked car, heading north.

It appears that on Friday they hijacked another car in the town of Montagny-Sainte-Felicite before travelling on to Dammartin.

The car’s owner recognised them as brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, the key suspects.

In a televised statement Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve confirmed the men being sought on Friday were those wanted for the Charlie Hebdo attack and said they would be “neutralised”. (Reuters) (BBC).