Multiple hostages and wounded at Paris grocery store

A shooting and hostage-taking attack is under way at a kosher market on the eastern edge of Paris, France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor said.

There are multiple hostages and wounded at the scene, a police official said.

BREAKING: Paris police: Market gunman threatens to kill hostages if police storm terrorist brothers.

— The Associated Press (@AP) January 9, 2015

Two people were reported to have been killed after a gunman took five people, including children, hostage in a Jewish supermarket in Paris.

This was denied by the Interior Ministry, according to the France 24 news agency.

Interior Ministry has denied reports that 2 people died in the attack on a kosher supermarket http://t.co/LdSF5QeCiv pic.twitter.com/bX931xR6Xr

— FRANCE 24 (@FRANCE24) January 9, 2015

Police deny reports of 2 killed in #Paris today; say 1 person wounded, several taken hostage at kosher supermarket http://t.co/OXN1JolH6a

— Joseph Bamat (@josephbamat) January 9, 2015

A woman has told how she received a phone call from her mother, who she claimed is being held hostage in the shop in Porte de Vincennes.

She told Europe 1: “She called me and told me: ’I am in the shop, I love you’.

“I am scared. Someone told me there have been two deaths. No one has told me if it is my mother or not.”

The man opened fire in the market today and declared: “You know who I am”, the police official said.

Paris police later released a photo of Amedy Coulibaly as a suspect in the killing yesterday of a policewoman, and the official named him as the man holed up in the market. He said some hostages have been gravely wounded.

He said a second suspect, a woman named Hayet Boumddiene, is the gunman’s accomplice.

The supermarket in question was named in reports as the Hypercacher Vincennes.

A Twitter user called David who said he was in a restaurant near the scene at Porte de Vincennes reported hearing gunshots.

He wrote: “Everyone is under the tables. The atmosphere is changing between nervous laughter and the first signs of stress.”

He posted images of armed officers crouched at the side of a car, with the message: “Facing hypercasher.”

Face à #hypercasher à #saintmande pic.twitter.com/iYYr3NxanO

— ddlr (@WanelarEdgar) January 9, 2015

EN DIRECT Fusillade et #prise d'otage porte de Vincennes à #paris http://t.co/euaQvHJFaZ #police pic.twitter.com/emyA3JBa2B

— Routeur News (@RouteurNews) January 9, 2015

Police have ordered all shops closed in a famed Jewish neighbourhood in central Paris, far from the two developing hostage situations.

The mayor’s office in Paris announced the closures of shops along the Rosiers street in Paris’s Marais neighbourhood, in the heart of the tourist district and about a kilometre away from the offices of newspaper Charlie Hebdo where 12 people were killed on Wednesday.

Hours before the Jewish Sabbath, the street is usually especially crowded with shoppers – French Jews and tourists alike.

The events near Paris’s Porte de Vincennes took place as two suspects in France’s deadliest terror attack in decades were cornered near Charles de Gaulle airport.

France has been on high alert for more attacks since the country’s worst terror attack in decades – the massacre on Wednesday in Paris that left 12 people dead at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

Authorities around Europe have warned of the threat posed by the return of Western jihadis trained in warfare.

France counts at least 1,200 citizens in the war zone in Syria – headed there, returned or dead.

Both IS and al Qaida have threatened France, home to Western Europe’s largest Muslim population.