One of the gunmen responsible for last week’s massacre at a French magazine claimed to have lived with the Nigerian who tried to carry out the failed al-Qaeda “underwear bomb” plot five years ago, a Yemeni reporter has said.

Farid Benyettou, the man believed to have radicalised the Kouachi brothers involved in the Paris terror attack, has been working since December as a trainee nurse in the emergency services at a Paris hospital where victims of the Charlie Hebdo attack were treated.

FRENCH media estimate up to 3m took part in the Paris rally for unity against terrorism — more than the numbers who took to the capital’s streets when the Allies liberated the city from the Nazis in the Second World War.

World leaders have joined tens of thousands of people in a giant rally of national unity to honour the 17 victims of the Paris terror attacks.

French detectives are continuing to search for fugitives suspected to have been involved in the Paris massacres, as details of how police foiled the terrorists’ operations have begun to unfold.

President Francois Hollande warned that the danger to France, home to the European Union’s biggest communities of both Muslims and Jews, was not over yet.

French President Francois Hollande has called on the country to “remain vigilant” as the hostage crisis which started at the Charlie Hebdo magazine massacre came to a bloody end with the loss of at least 20 lives.

Al Qaida’s branch in Yemen tonight claimed it had directed the attack against the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris “as revenge for the honour” of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed.

Two brothers are suddenly the most wanted men in France, suspected of the armed onslaught on a newspaper office that claimed a dozen lives and horrified this country and much of the world.