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Charlie Hebdo manhunt latest: What we do and do not know

Police search for the Charlie Hebdo attack suspects in the Aisne region of France on Thursday

Latest updates

  • Both AFP and Reuters have cited police sources as saying gunfire heard and hostages taken in the village of Dammartin-en-Goele near Charles de Gaulle airport.

  • The Independent's John Lichfield, who is in Paris, cited local reports of gunfire in the village 25 miles north-east of Paris occurred soon after the men resembling the two brothers sought for the Charlie Hebdo massacre were reported to have hijacked a car.

What we know

  • French police were continuing their search for the two brothers suspected of killing 12 people at satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris in a presumed Islamist militant strike on Thursday evening, a day and a half after the attack.

  • All 12 of the dead have now been identified.

  • Authorities released photos of brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, aged 32 and 34, both of whom were already under watch by security services.

  • Patrick Pelloux, one of Charlie Hebdo's columnists, said the magazine will be published next week despite the massacre.

Police released these images of Cherif Kouachi (left) and his brother Said Kouachi

  • Nine people have already been arrested in the ongoing investigation into the attack.

  • Late on Wednesday an 18-year-old man, Hamyd Mourad, turned himself into police. French media quoted friends as saying he was in school at the moment of the attack.

  • A policewoman was shot and killed in Paris on Thursday morning and a street sweeper was also inured, but France's interior minister has said there is no evidence of a link between the shooting and the Charlie Hebdo attack. However prosecutors are treating the policewoman's murder as a terrorist attack.

What has been reported

  • Gunshots were reportedly heard near Charles de Gaulle airport on Friday morning, after two men resembling the Kouachi brother hijacked a car nearby.

  • Late on Thursday night the brothers broke cover near Crépy-en-Valois and held up a petrol station on one of the main routes from the capital.

  • The Independent's John Lichfield and Cahal Milmo, reporting from Paris, said the manhunt was entering its decisive phase on Thursday evening in the French countryside.

Hundreds of elite armed police were combing woodland and fields outside a small town 60 miles north east of Paris as military helicopters circled overhead in an operation to pinpoint suspected mass killers Cherif and Said Kouachi.

  • AFP reports there have been several attacks on mosques since the killings at Charlie Hebdo.

  • Jihadist flags and molotov cocktails were found in an abandoned car used by the suspected attackers.

An unidentified man is detained by police in Reims, north France

What we still don't know

  • While it is being presumed that the gunmen were Islamists who attacked Charlie Hebdo in retaliation for their cartoons, the motivation for the attack has still not been confirmed.

  • As Milmo and Lichfield report, there is no clear information on the third suspect in the case.

The existence of a claimed third suspect in the Charlie Hebdo killings remained unclear after the 18-year-old brother in law of Cherif Kouachi surrendered himself voluntarily to police, claiming he had been in school at the time of the attack.

Additional reporting: AP/Reuters

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