France Attack: 3rd terrorist killed along with 4 hostages he took in Jewish kosher store

The two brothers died when security forces moved in on a print works in the small town of Dammartin-en-Goele, northeast of Paris, where the chief suspects in Wednesday’s attack had been holed up with their hostage.

A police source said the hostage-taker at the Jewish supermarket, who is believed to have had links to the same Islamist group as the brothers, had also been killed.

The print works at Dammartin-en-Goele, set in marsh and woodland, had been under siege since the gunmen abandoned a high-speed car chase and took refuge there early on Friday.

Charlie Hebdo had long courted controversy with satirical attacks on Islam as well as other religions and political leaders. A witness said one of the gunmen in Wednesday’s attack was heard to shout: “We have killed Charlie Hebdo! We have avenged the Prophet!”

The gunmen killed 12 people in the attack on the Charlie Hebdo weekly, which raised questions about surveillance of radicals, far-right politics, religion and censorship in a land struggling to integrate part of its five-million Muslim population, the EU’s largest.

Security sources said the French-born brothers of Algerian origin had been under surveillance and had been placed on European and U.S. “no-fly” lists.

Full coverage: Charlie Hebdo terror attack

Two groups of terrorists had seized hostages at separate locations around the French capital on Friday, facing off against thousands of French security forces as the city shut down a famed Jewish neighborhood and scrambled to protect residents and tourists from further attacks.

Also Read: Paris policewoman killing linked to massacre brothers, say Police

By Friday afternoon, explosions and gunshots rang out and white smoke rose outside a printing plant in Dammartin-en-Goele, northeast of Paris, where brothers Cherif Kouachi, 32, and Said Kouachi, 34, had holed up with a hostage.

Security forces had surrounded the building for most of the day. After the explosions, a police SWAT forces could be seen on the roof of the building and one police helicopter landed near it.

Audrey Taupenas, spokeswoman for the town near the Charles de Gaulle airport, said the brothers had died in the clash.

Also Read: French terror suspects in phone contact, want ‘martyr’ death

The two sets of hostage-takers know each other, said the official, who was not authorized to discuss the rapidly developing situations with the media.

Police officers communicate inside a school of Dammartin-en-Goele, northeast of Paris. Brothers suspected in a newspaper terror attack were cornered with a hostage inside a printing house on Friday. (Source: AP photo)

Trying to fend off further attacks, the Paris mayor’s office shut down all shops along Rosiers Street in the city’s famed Marais neighborhood in the heart of the tourist district.  Hours before the Jewish Sabbath, the street is usually crowded with shoppers _ French Jews and tourists alike. The street is also only a kilometer (a half mile) away from Charlie Hebdo’s offices.

At the kosher grocery near the Porte de Vincennes neighborhood in Paris, the gunman burst in shooting just a few hours before the Jewish Sabbath began, declaring “You know who I am,” the official recounted. The attack came before sundown when the store would have been crowded with shoppers.

Also Read: Danish newspaper says won’t print Prophet cartoons

The official said the gunman is also believed responsible for the roadside killing of a Paris policewoman on Thursday.

Paris police released a photo of the gunman, Amedy Coulibaly, and a second suspect, a woman named Hayet Boumddiene, who the official said was his accomplice.

Several people wounded when the gunman opened fire in the kosher grocery were able to flee and get medical care, the official said.

Also Read: Car chase, hostage drama as Paris massacre suspects cornered

Police said 100 students were under lockdown in schools nearby and the highway ringing Paris was closed.

Hours before and 40 kilometers (25 miles) away , a convoy of police trucks, helicopters and ambulances streamed toward Dammartin-en-Goele, a small industrial town near Charles de Gaulle airport, to seize the Charlie Hebdo suspects, who had hijacked a car in a nearby town after more than two days on the run.

File photo shows French cartoonists Georges Wolinski, left, and Jean Cabut who were killed in terrorists attack on Charlie Hebdo office. (Source: AP photo)

“They said they want to die as martyrs,” Yves Albarello, a local lawmaker who said he was inside the command post, told French television station i-Tele.

Cherif Kouachi, 32, was convicted of terrorism charges in 2008 for ties to a network sending jihadis to fight U.S. forces in Iraq.

Paris police released a photo of Amedy Coulibaly as a suspect in the killing Thursday of a policewoman, and the official named him as the man holed up in the market. A second suspect, a woman named Hayet Boumddiene, is the gunman’s accomplice. (Source: AP photo)

A Yemeni security official said his 34-year-old brother, Said Kouachi, is suspected of having fought for al-Qaida in Yemen. Another senior security official says Kouachi was in Yemen until 2012.

As if to prove that pens are mightier than swords, cartoonists around the world reacted to the cold-bloodied assassination of their colleagues at French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo as only they can: with powerful drawings worth a thousand words. (Source: AP photo)

Both officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of an ongoing investigation into Kouachi’s stay in Yemen.

Both brothers were on the U.S. no-fly list, a senior U.S. counterterrorism official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss foreign intelligence publicly.