Police are hunting three French nationals, including two brothers from the Paris region, after suspected Islamist gunmen killed 12 people at a satirical magazine, a police official and government source said.
The hooded attackers stormed the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, a weekly known for lampooning Islam and other religions, in the most deadly militant attack on French soil in decades.
French police staged a huge manhunt for the attackers who escaped by car after shooting dead some of France’s top cartoonists as well as two police officers. About 800 soldiers were brought in to shore up security across the capital.
Police issued a document to forces across the region saying the three men were being sought for murder in relation to the Charlie Hebdo attack. The document, reviewed by a Reuters correspondent, named them as Said Kouachi, born in 1980, Cherif Kouachi, born in 1982, and Hamyd Mourad, born in 1996.
The police source said one of them had been identified by his identity card which had been left in the getaway car.
The Kouachi brothers were from the Paris region while Mourad was from the area of the northeastern city of Reims, the government source told Reuters.
Anti-terrorism police were preparing an operation in Reims, the police source said, declining to give more details.
The police source said one of the brothers had previously been tried on terrorism charges.
Cherif Kouachi was charged with criminal association related to a terrorist enterprise in 2005 after he had been arrested before leaving for Iraq to join Islamist militants. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 2008, according to French media.
During the attack, one of the assailants was captured on video outside the building shouting «Allahu Akbar!» (God is Greatest) as shots rang out. Another walked over to a police officer lying wounded on the street and shot him point-blank with an assault rifle, before the two calmly climbed into a black car and drove off.
A police union official said there were fears of further attacks, and described the scene in the offices as carnage, with a further four wounded fighting for their lives.
Later in the Paris evening, thousands of people began to congregate on the Place de la Republique square in protest at the killings. Those scenes were reflected across France, with impromptu gatherings in cities and towns attracting tens of thousands of participants.
Protesters held up placards proclaiming «I am Charlie», in reference to the targeted magazine, in an outburst of revulsion following the bloody attacks.
France is already on high alert after calls last year from Islamist militants to attack its citizens and interests in reprisal for French military strikes on Islamist strongholds in the Middle East and Africa.
British Prime Minister David Cameron described the attack as sickening.
Late last year, a man shouting «Allahu Akbar» («God is greatest») injured 13 by ramming a vehicle into a crowd in the eastern city of Dijon. Prime Minister Manuel Valls said at the time France had «never before faced such a high threat linked to terrorism.»
A firebomb attack gutted the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo, a publication that has always courted controversy with satirical attacks on political and religious leaders, in November 2011 after it put an image of the Prophet Mohammad on its cover.
The last tweet on Charlie Hebdo’s account mocked Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State, which has taken control of large swathes of Iraq and Syria.
Source: Buenos Aires Herald