PARIS (AP) — Police SWAT teams backed by helicopters tracked two heavily armed brothers with al-Qaida sympathies suspected in the newsroom massacre of a satirical French weekly that spoofed Islam, honing in Thursday on a region north of Paris as the nation mourned the dozen slain.
Authorities fear a second strike by the suspects, who U.S. counterterrorism officials said were both on the U.S. no-fly list, and distributed their portraits with the notice “armed and dangerous.” More than 88,000 security forces were deployed on the streets of France.
French riot officers patrol in Longpont, north of Paris, France, on Thursday, Jan. 8, 2015.They also extended France’s maximum terror alert from Paris to the northern Picardie region, focusing on several towns that might be possible safe havens for the two suspects — Cherif Kouachi, 32, and Said Kouachi, 34.
Both men were on the U.S. no-fly list, a senior U.S. counterterrorism official said Thursday. Another U.S. official said the elder Kouachi had traveled to Yemen, although it was unclear whether he there to work with extremist groups like al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, which is based there. Witnesses said the attackers claimed allegiance to al-Qaida in Yemen during the bloody attack Wednesday.
A third suspect, Mourad Hamyd, 18, surrendered at a police station Wednesday evening after hearing his name linked to the attacks. His relationship to the Kouachi brothers was unclear.