Hostage-taking at Paris kosher supermarket linked to Charlie Hebdo killers
A heavily armed man took at least five people in a kosher supermarket in Paris on Friday. The attacker is believed to be the suspect identified in Thursday's fatal shooting a policewoman and is reported to be linked with the two brothers wanted for Wednesday's massacre at Charlie Hebdo magazine.
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Shooting erupted in the kosher grocery store at Porte de Vincennes, eastern Paris, on Friday afternoon with reports of six people taken hostage.
"It is the Montrouge shooter," a police source said, referring to Thursday's killing of a female police officer just outside the capital.
The shooting took place as the two suspects in Wednesday Charlie Hebdo killings were holed up with a hostage on an industrial estate north-east of Paris.
Police on Friday said that a link had been established between the Montrouge suspect and Chérif and Saïd Kouachi.
They knew each other, according to France 2 TV, while weekly Le Point said that they belonged to the same jihadist network, which was sending would-be fighters to Iraq, leading to Chérif Kouachi's imprisonment in 2005.
"The suspect has been identified. Two people very close to him have been taken into custody," a police source said.
On Friday afternoon police issued a wanted notice for a woman and a man - Hayat Boumeddiene, 26, and Amedy Coulibaly, 32 - in connection with the Paris violence.
Both were likely to be armed and dangerous, they warned.
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