Paris shooting suspect 'surrenders'

The youngest of the three suspects in the terror attack on a French satirical magazine in which 12 people died has handed himself in to police, according to reports.

Hamyd Mourad, 18, was named as one of the main suspects in the massacre, alongside brothers Said Kouachi and Cherif Kouachi, who are both in their 30s.

Agence France-Presse, the country’s national news agency, tweeted:“Youngest of three suspects in Paris attack surrenders to police, sources say.”

Some of France’s most revered cartoonists were among those who died when armed gunmen burst into the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo and opened fire.

Heavily armoured French police last night raided an apartment in the city of Reims, east of Paris, as they continue a massive manhunt to find the killers.

Photographs showed scores of police clad in black protective clothing and carrying riot shields entering the apartment building.

Police in white boiler suits appeared to be taking samples from inside the flat.

Thousands of officers have reportedly been deployed in the hunt for the men behind the attack, who have been linked to a Yemeni terrorist network.

The magazine, which lampoons politicians and religions, has received repeated threats and was firebombed in 2011 after publishing a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed. The terrorist attack has sparked horror across the world and condemned by global leaders as an attack on free speech.

France’s president Francois Hollande has declared a national day of mourning today following the bloody raid – France’s worst terror attack since 1961. In the UK, Home Secretary Theresa May will chair a meeting of the Government’s emergency committee Cobra today.

And Prime Minister David Cameron has offered the assistance of British spies to help French agencies investigate the atrocity.

The masked gunmen burst into the magazine’s headquarters armed with automatic rifles in the middle of their morning editorial meeting.

They shouted “Allahu Akbar” – God is greatest – as they opened fire indiscriminately, killing a number of the publication’s staff and two police officers.

A chilling video captures the pair moments later, showing them climb out of their black car and calmly jog towards a police officer and gun him down.

Survivor and Charlie Hebdo cartoonist Corinne “Coco” Rey was quoted by French newspaper L’Humanite as saying: “I had gone to collect my daughter from day care and as I arrived in front of the door of the paper’s building two hooded and armed men threatened us.

“They wanted to go inside, to go upstairs. I entered the code. They fired on Wolinski, Cabu ... it lasted five minutes ... I sheltered under a desk ... They spoke perfect French ... claimed to be from al Qaida.”

The attackers also reportedly shouted: “We have avenged the prophet.” No group has yet claimed responsibility for the atrocity.

The slaughter has sparked global outrage. Mr Cameron branded it “sickening” while Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said the killings were a “barbaric attack on freedom of speech”.

And it has triggered vigils across the world as people flocked to public squares to condemn the attack. Hundreds of people filled London’s Trafalgar Square last night, many holding pens, pencils and notebooks in the air to show their solidarity for the journalists and police murdered.

Others held aloft makeshift placards reading “Je suis Charlie” – “I am Charlie”. The phrase has come to represent people’s shock and outrage at the massacre and has been trending on Twitter.

There were similar scenes at Paris’ Place de la Republique and around the world.

One of the suspects in the attack, Cherif Kouachi, was convicted in 2008 of terrorism charges for helping funnel fighters to Iraq’s insurgency and sentenced to 18 months in prison.

The Prime Minister said he had offered Mr Hollande “any assistance our intelligence agencies can give” following the “barbaric” raid at Charlie Hebdo.

The Queen sent her “sincere condolences” to the victims’ relatives.

At a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Downing Street, Mr Cameron said the two leaders had been briefed on the situation by the British security agencies.

The pair also spoke to Mr Hollande from the Prime Minister’s office in No 10, a call Mrs Merkel described as a “very moving moment”.

Although it is unusual for a foreign leader to be given a briefing by the British intelligence agencies MI5 and MI6, Downing Street said it was “not unprecedented”.

The 10-minute briefing was based on what the intelligence agencies had been able to piece together so far from open source material, and highlighted the calm, determined and apparently professional way the killers had carried out the assault.

The Prime Minister said: “This is different from some of the plots that we have seen here in the UK from so-called home-grown terrorists.”

The UK was “already at a very high state of alert” and the security services were looking at what more could be done, he said.

Defending the right to free speech he said: “We should be very clear this day that these values that we have are not sources of weakness for us, they are sources of strength.”

The dead are reported to include the magazine’s editor Stephane “Charb” Chabonnier, and two policemen. Cartoonists Jean Cabu, Bernard “Tignous” Verlhac and Georges Wolinski and economist Bernard Maris were also reported to be among those killed.

Mr Charbonnier was included in a 2013 Wanted Dead Or Alive For Crimes Against Islam article in Inspire, the terrorist propaganda magazine published by al Qaida. Charlie Hebdo’s editor-in-chief Gerard Biard, who was in London at the time of the attack, spoke of his shock.

He told France Inter: “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.”

Witnesses at the magazine headquarters described a scene of carnage, with bullet holes and smashed windows.

Gilles Boulanger, who works in the same building, likened the scene to a war zone.

“A neighbour called to warn me that there were armed men in the building and that we had to shut all the doors,” he said.

“And several minutes later there were several shots heard in the building from automatic weapons firing in all directions. So then we looked out of the window and saw the shooting was on Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, with the police. It was really upsetting. You’d think it was a war zone.”