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 Earlier, police had chased a vehicle at high speed along a main
road heading towards Paris as one of France's biggest security
operations in recent times unfolded. Gunshots rang out and the
suspects abandoned their car in Dammartin-en-Goele, a small town of
about 8,000 residents.
Police trucks, ambulances and armored vehicles descended on the area
close to Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport after the suspects took
refuge with at least one hostage in a building on an industrial
estate, according to police sources.
Police quickly blocked all entrances to the town seeking to limit
the scale of any siege and confine the suspects, French-born sons of
Algerian-born parents. Residents were asked to stay off the streets.
"All residents are requested to remain at home. Children are to be
kept safe in school,” the municipal website said.
 The two suspects have been on the run since they stormed the Paris
offices of the Charlie Hebdo weekly newspaper on Wednesday, killing
ten journalists and two police officers in an attack that raised
security fears across the world. The journal was known for its
irreverent satirical treatment of Islam as well as other religions
and political leaders.
Yves Albarello, local MP for the Seine-et-Marne department and
member of the crisis cell put in place by authorities, told iTELE
the two suspects had let it be known that they wanted to die “as
martyrs”.
Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet told iTELE
television: "We are almost certain it is those two individuals holed
up in that building."
Separately, a police source told Reuters that the man who killed a
policewoman in a southern suburb of Paris on Thursday and fled the
scene was a member of the same Islamist group as the two suspects in
the Charlie Hebdo shooting.
The source said the three men were all members of the same Paris
cell that a decade ago sent young French volunteers to Iraq to fight
U.S. forces. Cherif Kouachi served 18 months in prison for his role
in the group.
Western security services had been keen to trace any links between
the two suspects and militants overseas. A senior Yemeni
intelligence source told Reuters one of the two was in Yemen for
several months in 2011 for religious studies.
The danger of hostage taking or of a second attack has been a
central concern of security services since the attack that has
rocked France and raised questions about policing, militancy,
religion and censorship.
WORLDWIDE CONCERN
World leaders described Wednesday's attack on Charlie Hebdo as an
assault on democracy; but al Qaeda's North Africa branch praised the
gunmen as "knight(s) of truth".
Yohann Bardoux, a plumber whose office is two doors down from the
printing shop where the hostage-taking was playing out stayed away
from work after hearing gunfire. But he said his mother was in the
building next door to the printing shop.
 "Of course I'm worried about her, I hope it all comes down soon, and
turns out well," Bardoux said.
"They are everywhere. It's really jumping. They've blocked the whole
zone, we've got helicopters overhead, the police presence is
impressive."
A spokesman for Charles-de-Gaulle airport said all its runways were
open but that landings were only taking place at the two south
terminals.
A senior Yemeni intelligence source told Reuters one of the two
suspects was in Yemen for several months in 2011 for religious
studies; but there was no confirmed information whether he was
trained by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
The gunmen shouted "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest) as they carried
out the attack, which has been described by President Francois
Hollande and other world leaders as an attack on the fundamentals of
democracy.
The attack has raised fears in other capitals of similar actions.
Western leaders have long feared Islamist militants drawn into
fighting in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere could launch attacks in
their home countries on their return.
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London suffered an assault on its transport system in 2005, four
years after the 9/11 attacks in the United States. More recent
attacks have been carried out by militants in countries including
India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Kenya.
The fugitive suspects are both in their early 30s, and were already
under police surveillance. One was jailed for 18 months for trying
to travel to Iraq a decade ago to fight as part of an Islamist cell.
Police said they were "armed and dangerous". U.S. and European
sources close to the investigation said on Thursday that one of the
brothers, Said Kouachi, was in Yemen in 2011 for several months
training with AQAP, one of the group's most active affiliates.
A Yemeni official familiar with the matter said the Yemen government
was aware of the possibility of a connection between Said Kouachi
and AQAP, and was looking into any possible links.
U.S. government sources said Said Kouachi and his brother Cherif
Kouachi were listed in two U.S. security databases, a highly
classified database containing information on 1.2 million possible
counter-terrorism suspects, called TIDE, and the much smaller "no
fly" list maintained by the Terrorist Screening Center, an
inter-agency unit.
U.S. television network ABC reported that the brothers had been
listed in the databases for "years".
Amid local media reports of isolated incidents of violence directed
at Muslims in France, Hollande and his Socialist government have
called on the French not to blame the Islamic faith for the Charlie
Hebdo killings.
Hollande has held talks with opposition leaders and, in a rare move,
invited Marine Le Pen, leader of the resurgent anti-immigrant
National Front, to his Elysee Palace for discussions on Friday.
QUESTIONS OVER POLICING
French people held a national day of mourning on Thursday. The bells
of Notre Dame pealed for those killed in the attack on the
left-leaning slayer of sacred cows whose cartoonists have been
national figures since the Parisian counter-cultural heyday of the
1960s and 1970s.
Many European newspapers either re-published Charlie Hebdo cartoons
or lampooned the killers with images of their own.
The younger brother's jail sentence for trying to fight in Iraq a
decade ago, and more recent tangles with the authorities over
suspected involvement in militant plots, raised questions over
whether police could have done more to watch them.
Cherif Kouachi was arrested on Jan. 25, 2005 preparing to fly to
Syria en route to Iraq. He served 18 months of a three-year
sentence.
"He was part of a group of young people who were a little lost,
confused, not really fanatics in the proper sense of the word,"
lawyer Vincent Ollivier, who represented Cherif in the case, told
Liberation daily.
In 2010 he was suspected of being part of a group that tried to
break from prison Smain Ali Belkacem, a militant jailed for the 1995
bombings of Paris train and metro stations that killed eight people
and wounded 120. The case against Cherif Kouachi was dismissed for
lack of evidence.
(Additional reporting by Paris and U.S. bureaus; Editing by Mark
John, Ralph Boulton and Peter Millership)
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