Hostage negotiators remain in talks with the Kouachi brothers as they try to save the life of the hostage believed to have been taken this morning.
The hostage is believed to be a woman which could help the negotiators after one of the suspects is reported to have spared a Charlie Hebdo reporter because they ‘don’t kill women.’
Reporter Sigolène Vinson survived the attack on the Paris office of the weekly French satirical magazine in which 12 people, including two police officers, were shot dead.
Ms Vinson told Radio France Internationale that one of the killers pointed his gun at her but spared her, saying: “I’m not killing you because you are a woman and we don’t kill women but you have to convert to Islam, read the Qu’ran and wear a veil.”
The two brothers have told police that they are prepared to die as martyrs.
The two heavily armed brothers suspected in the deadly storming of a satirical newspaper in Paris have been cornered inside a printing house near Charles de Gaulle airport 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 of Dammartin-en-Goele, north east 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, 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.