PRESIDENT COMMENTS
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) President Barack Obama says he is hopeful that the immediate threat posed by terrorists in Paris has been now resolved. He says the situation remains fluid and that the French government continues to face the threat of terrorism.
Obama says he has been kept apprised of the rapidly unfolding events after gunmen shot and killed 12 people Wednesday at a satirical newspaper in Paris. Obama made his remarks at the top of a speech on education in Knoxville, Tennessee.
UPDATE 3:06PM
WASHINGTON (AP) U.S. intelligence officials believe that the elder of the two French suspects, Said Kouachi, received terrorist training from al Qaeda's Yemeni affiliate for a couple of months in 2011, with the idea of him returning home to mount an attack.
French authorities knew Kouachi traveled to Yemen, but it's not clear whether they knew what he did there, according to an intelligence assessment described to The Associated Press, Still, French authorities placed both Kouachi brothers under close surveillance when he returned.
U.S. officials believe the brothers led a normal life for long enough that the French began to view them as less of a threat and reduced the surveillance.
More UPDATES AFTER THE JUMP
UPDATE 2:06pm
PARIS (AP) Authorities in France have brought an end to a pair of hostage standoffs - killing three gunmen, including the two brothers suspected in this week's deadly attack on the offices of a satirical newspaper in Paris. Police say the two brothers came out of their hideaway with guns blazing, and were killed in a clash with security forces. Their hostage was freed safely. A short time later, another hostage-taker in Paris was killed, along with three of the hostages he had held at a kosher grocery.
PARIS (AP) French authorities say the hostage-taker who was killed in Paris today knew the two brothers who died at the end of their own hostage siege. In fact, they say he had warned police not to launch an assault on the brothers, or he would kill his hostages. The police assaults took place at nearly the same time. The grocery gunman is also suspected in the shooting death of a policewoman yesterday in Paris.
BACKGROUND FROM AP 3.15PM
PARIS (AP) With explosions and gunfire, French security forces ended a three-day terror rampage around Paris, killing the two al-Qaida-linked brothers who staged a murderous rampage at a satirical newspaper as well as an associate who seized a kosher supermarket to try to help them escape.
It was the worst terror spree France has seen in decades. At least seven people were killed Friday, the three terrorists and at least four hostages just days after 12 people were massacred in the newspaper attack Wednesday. Sixteen hostages were freed Friday, one from the printing plant where the two brothers were holed up and 15 others from the Paris grocery store.
The fate of a fourth suspect _ the wife of the supermarket attacker _ remained unclear and Paris shut down a famed Jewish neighborhood amid fears that a wider terror cell might launch further attacks. France's interior minister warned his shaken nation to remain ``extremely vigilant.''
The four attackers had ties to each other and to terrorism that reached back years and extended from Paris to al-Qaida in Yemen. They epitomized Western authorities' greatest fear: Islamic radicals who trained abroad and came home to stage attacks.
Said and CherifKouachi, the brothers who attacked the Charlie Hebdo satirical weekly, came out with their guns blazing Friday evening after an all-day hostage siege at a printing plant northeast of Paris, a French police official said. They were killed and their hostage was freed, authorities said.
An accomplice, AmediCoulibaly, took hostages Friday afternoon at a kosher grocery in the Porte de Vincennes neighborhood in Paris, then died in a nearly simultaneous raid there, said Gael Fabiano of the UNSA police union. Coulibaly had threatened to kill his five hostages if French authorities launched an assault on the two brothers, a police official said.
A French television news network spoke directly with two of the terrorists Friday before they died. BFM television said it spoke with CherifKouachi as he and his brother were cornered near Charles de Gaulle airport and he told the station they were financed and dispatched by al-Qaida in Yemen.
The station also said it spoke with Coulibaly, who said the three men were coordinating and that he was with the militant Islamic State group. The organizations are normally rivals.
France has been on high alert since the Charlie Hebdo massacre left 12 people dead. The next day, a gunman shot a policewoman to death in a gunfight just south of Paris. Police later identified the gunman as Coulibaly, who had been a co-suspect with CherifKouachi in a court case involving terrorism that never made it to trial.
The Kouachi brothers led police on a chase around northeast France, robbing a gas station Thursday and stealing a car Friday morning before seizing hostages at a printing plant in Dammartin-en-Goele, a small industrial town near Charles de Gaulle airport.
Friday afternoon, explosions and gunshots rang out and white smoke rose outside as a police SWAT team clambered onto the roof. Audrey Taupenas, spokeswoman for the town near the Charles de Gaulle airport, said the brothers had died in the clash.
“They said they want to die as martyrs,'' Yves Albarello, a local lawmaker inside the command post, told French television station i-Tele.
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 (half a mile) 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.
Paris police released a photo of Coulibaly and his wife, HayetBoumddiene, who the official said was his accomplice.
Several people wounded when the gunman opened fire in the grocery store were able to flee and get medical care. One hundred students were locked down in nearby schools and the highway ringing Paris was closed.
CherifKouachi, 32, was convicted of terrorism charges in 2008 for ties to a network sending jihadis to fight U.S. forces in Iraq.
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 said Said was in Yemen until 2012.
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 also 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.
The satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo had long drawn threats for its depictions of Islam, although it also satirized other religions and political figures. The weekly paper had caricatured the Prophet Muhammad, and a sketch of Islamic State's leader was the last tweet sent out by the irreverent newspaper, minutes before the attack.
Eight journalists, two police officers, a maintenance worker and a visitor were killed in the newspaper attack, including the paper's editor. Charlie Hebdo plans a special edition next week, produced in the offices of another paper.
Authorities around Europe have warned of the threat posed by the return of Western jihadis trained in warfare. France counts at least 1,200 citizens in the war zone in Syria, headed there, returned or dead. Both the Islamic State group and al-Qaida have threatened France, home to Western Europe's largest Muslim population.