Manhunt for trio under way after ‘barbaric’ act
The suspects were named as brothers Said Kouachi and Cherif Kouachi, French nationals aged in their early 30s, and 18-year-old Hamyd Mourad, whose nationality is unclear.
The police source said one of the brothers had previously been tried on terrorism charges.
The suspected Islamist militants escaped after shooting dead some of France’s top cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo, as well as two police officers.
The black-clad gunmen who stormed the Paris office spoke perfect French and acted like trained Islamist commandos, shooting victims in an apparently well-prepared attack.
A witness inside the building told French media that one attacker had identified himself to her as a member of al Qaeda.
Terrorism experts said the hooded gunmen, who wore matching jumpsuits with ammunition belts and carried Kalashnikov assault rifles, appeared to have carried out their attack methodically.
“I was struck not only by their cold-blooded calm but also the professional way that they made their getaway, taking the time to finish off a wounded policeman,” said Jean-Louis Bruguiere, a former top anti-terrorism investigative magistrate.
Security forces were last night searching for the attackers who went on the run after staging the “barbaric” raid at the Paris headquarters of Charlie Hebdo, which angered some Muslims after publishing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
The massacre was France’s deadliest terror attack in at least two decades and prompted outrage and condemnation from world leaders, journalists and free speech campaigners.
Masked gunmen armed with automatic rifles were heard shouting “Allahu Akbar” — God is greatest —as they stormed the office before firing indiscriminately, killing a number of the publication’s staff and two police officers.
The attackers also reportedly shouted: “We have avenged the prophet.” .
Chilling footage taken by terrified witnesses from windows and on rooftops overlooking the scene showed the terrorists shooting one of their victims, who appears to be in a police uniform, in cold blood at close range as he lay already injured on a pavement of the otherwise deserted Paris street. A bullet-ridden Police Nationale vehicle was left nearby.
The black Citroen hatchback the attackers used to flee the scene was found later and combed by forensic investigators.
French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said “all the means” of the justice and interior ministries have been mobilised to “neutralise the three criminals who have committed this barbaric act”.
He added that the operation will take place as quickly as possible in order to “identify the aggressors and arrest them in a way that they will be punished with the severity that corresponds to the barbaric act they have committed”.
It was reported that cartoonists Jean Cabu, Stephane Charbonnier and Bernard “Tignous” Verlhac were among the dead.
Charlie Hebdo’s website lists “Charb” as its publication director, and “Cabu” as artistic director.
Mr Charbonnier was included in a 2013 Wanted Dead Or Alive For Crimes Against Islam article published by Inspire, the terrorist propaganda magazine published by al Qaida.
French newspaper Le Monde reported cartoonist Georges Wolinski had also been killed.
Charlie Hebdo’s editor-in-chief Gerard Biard, who was in London at the time of the attack, spoke of his shock.
He said: “I don’t understand how people can attack a newspaper with heavy weapons. A newspaper is not a weapon of war.”
He said the magazine had not received threats of violence: “Not to my knowledge, and I don’t think anyone had received them as individuals, because they would have talked about it. There was no particular tension at the moment.”
French president Francois Hollandesaid it had left France in a state of shock. He said: “We are looking for the perpetrators of this crime.
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