French Terror Suspects Located

PARIS (AP) — A pair of heavily armed brothers suspected in the deadly storming of a satirical newspaper were cornered inside a printing house near Charles de Gaulle airport on Friday and appear to have taken a hostage, officials said.

Hundreds of French security forces backed by a convoy of ambulances streamed into the small industrial town northeast of Paris in a massive operation to seize the men suspected of carrying out France's deadliest terror attack in decades.

At least three helicopters hovered above the town of Dammartin-en-Goele, near Charles de Gaulle airport. Two runways were closed to arrivals to avoid interfering in the standoff, an airport spokesman said. Schools went into lockdown.

Shots were fired as the brothers stole a car in the early morning hours, said a French security official.

Tens of thousands of French security forces have mobilized to prevent a new terror attack since the Wednesday assault on the offices of Charlie Hebdo in the heart of Paris left 12 people dead, including the chief editor and cartoonist who had been under armed guard with threats against his life after publishing caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. His police bodyguard also died in the attack, which unfolded during an editorial meeting.

Brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi were named as the chief suspects after one of the two apparently left Said's identity card behind in their abandoned getaway car. The pair were holed up Friday inside CTF Creation Tendance Decouverte. Xavier Castaing, the chief Paris police spokesman, and town hall spokeswoman Audrey Taupenas, said there appeared to be one hostage inside the printing house.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls has said both men were known to intelligence services.

A senior U.S. official said Thursday the elder Kouachi had traveled to Yemen, although it was unclear whether he was there to join extremist groups like al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, which is based there.

The younger brother, Cherif, was convicted of terrorism charges in 2008 for his links to a network sending jihadis to fight American forces in Iraq.

Both were also on the U.S. no-fly list, a senior U.S. counterterrorism official said. The American officials also spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss foreign intelligence publicly.

Nine people, members of the brothers' entourage, have been detained for questioning in several regions. In all, 90 people, many of them witnesses to the grisly assault on the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, were questioned for information on the attackers, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said in a statement.

A third suspect, 18-year-old Mourad Hamyd, surrendered at a police station Wednesday evening after hearing his name linked to the attacks. His relationship to the Kouachi brothers was unclear.

The Kouachi brothers — born in Paris to Algerian parents — were well-known to French counterterrorism authorities. Cherif Kouachi, a former pizza deliveryman, had appeared in a 2005 French TV documentary on Islamic extremism and was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 2008 for trying to join up with fighters battling in Iraq.