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 Police sources could not immediately confirm a link with the
killings at Charlie Hebdo weekly newspaper which marked the worst
attack on French soil for decades and which national leaders and
allied states described as an assault on democracy.
Montrouge mayor Pierre Brossollette said the policewoman and a
colleague went to the site to deal with a traffic accident. A car
stopped and a man got out and shot at them before fleeing.
Witnesses said the shooter fled in a Renault Clio car. Police
sources said he had been wearing a bullet-proof vest and had a
handgun and assault rifle. However, one police officer at the scene
told Reuters the man did not appear to fit the bill of the Charlie
Hebdo shooters.
Live French television showed around a dozen police dressed in
protective wear and helmets massed outside a building near the scene
of the shoot-out.
The new incident came as France began a day of mourning for the
journalists of Charlie Hebdo weekly and police officers shot dead on
morning by black-hooded gunmen using Kalashnikov assault rifles.
French tricolor flags flew at half mast.
Charlie Hebdo is well known for lampooning Islam, other religions
and political figures. Tens of thousands took part in vigils across
France on Wednesday to defend freedom of speech, many wearing badges
declaring "Je Suis Charlie" (I Am Charlie) in support of the
newspaper and the principle of freedom of speech.
Newspapers across Europe on Thursday either re-published its
cartoons or mocked the killers with images of their own.
Britain's Daily Telegraph depicted two masked gunman outside the
doors of Charlie Hebdo saying to each other: "Be careful, they might
have pens". Many German newspapers republished Charlie Hebdo
cartoons.
Police released photos of the two French nationals still at large,
calling them "armed and dangerous": brothers Cherif and Said
Kouachi, aged 32 and 34, both of whom were already under watch by
security services.
The attack has raised questions of security in countries throughout
the Western world and beyond. Muslim community leaders have
condemned the attack, but some have expressed fears of a rise in
anti-islamic feeling in a country with a large Muslim population.
In a separate incident, police sources said the window of a kebab
shop next to a mosque in the central town of Villefrance-sur-Saone
was blown out by an overnight explosion. Local media said there were
no wounded.
Security services have long feared that nationals drawn into
Islamist militant groups fighting in Syria and Iraq could return to
their home countries to launch attacks - though there is no
suggestion that the two suspects named by police had actually fought
in either of these countries.
Britain's Cobra security committee was meeting on Thursday morning.
London's transport network was target of an attack in 2005, four
years after 9/11. There have been attacks in Kenya, Nigeria, India
and Pakistan that have raised fears in Europe.
Islamist militants have repeatedly threatened France with attacks
over its military strikes on Islamist strongholds in the Middle East
and Africa, and the government reinforced its anti-terrorism laws
last year.
 Prime Minister Manuel Valls said France faced a terrorist threat
"without precedent" and confirmed the two brothers were known to
security services. But he added it was too early to say whether
authorities had underestimated the threat they posed.
"Because they were known, they had been followed," he told RTL
radio, adding: "We must think of the victims. Today it's a day of
mourning."
A total of seven people had been arrested since the attack, he said.
Police sources said they were mostly acquaintances of the two main
suspects. One source said one of the brothers had been identified by
his identity card, left in the getaway car.
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Late Wednesday an 18-year-old man turned himself into police in
Charleville-Mézières near the Belgian border as police carried out
searches in Paris and the northeastern cities of Reims and
Strasbourg. A legal source said he was the brother-in-law of one of
the main suspects and French media quoted friends saying he was in
school at the moment of the attack.
COURTING CONTROVERSY
Cherif Kouachi served 18 months in prison on a charge of criminal
association related to a terrorist enterprise in 2005. He was part
of an Islamist cell enlisting French nationals from a mosque in
eastern Paris to go to Iraq to fight Americans in Iraq and arrested
before leaving for Iraq himself.
Video captured during the Wednesday attack showed one of the
assailants outside the Charlie Hebdo offices shouting "Allahu
Akbar!" (God is Greatest) as shots rang out.
Another was seen calmly walking over to a wounded police officer
lying on the street and shooting him with an assault rifle. The two
men then climbed into a black car and drove off.
In another clip, the men are heard shouting in French: "We have
killed Charlie Hebdo. We have avenged the Prophet Mohammad."
Charlie Hebdo (Charlie Weekly) has courted controversy in the past
with satirical attacks on political and religious leaders of all
faiths and has published numerous cartoons ridiculing the Prophet
Mohammad. Jihadists online repeatedly warned that the magazine would
pay for its ridicule.
Around France, tens of thousands of people joined impromptu rallies
and vigils on Wednesday night in memory of the victims - among them
some of France's most prominent and best-loved political cartoonists
- and to support freedom of speech.
Both the magazine's founder and its current editor-in-chief were
among those killed in what emergency services called to the scene
described as executions carried out at point-blank range.
Satire has deep historical roots in Europe where ridicule and
irreverence are seen as a means of chipping away at the authority of
sometimes self-aggrandising political and religious leaders and
institutions. Governments have frequently jailed satirists and their
targets have often sued, but the art is widely seen as one of the
mainstays of a liberal democracy.
French writer Voltaire enraged many in 18th century France with his
caustic depictions of royalty and the Catholic Church. The German
magazine Simplicissimus in its 70-year existence saw cartoonists
jailed and fined for ridiculing figures from Kaiser Wilhelm to
church leaders, Nazi grandees and communist activists.
"Freedom assassinated" wrote Le Figaro daily on its front page,
while Le Parisien said: "They won't kill freedom".
On Thursday the highest state of alert was still in place, with
tightened security at transport hubs, religious sites, media offices
and department stores.
The last major attack in Paris was in the mid-1990s when the
Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) carried out a spate of attacks,
including the bombing of a commuter train in 1995 which killed eight
people and injured 150.
(Additional reporting by Emmanuel Jarry and Nicolas Bertin; editing
by Mark John and Ralph Boulton)
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