Arrests in Charlie Hebdo manhunt

SEVEN people were arrested overnight in connection with the massive manhunt for the gunmen who shot and killed 12 people at the Paris offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said this morning.

The two chief suspects, brothers Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, remain at large. The French nationals are described as “likely to be armed and dangerous”.

Today is a day of national mourning in France.

Mr Cazeneuve told Europe1 radio: “Those who committed these attacks must know that they will be caught.”

Media reports say four of the arrests were made during an anti-terror raid on a property in Reims, 90km east of Paris late last night. It is believed the property was once lived in by the Kouachi brothers. They were not in the property at the time.

Mr Cazeneuve said that 88,000 police and gendarmes had been mobilised across France following the attack, but warned: “We are facing a new kind of phenomenon. When terrorist acts were committed in the 90s, they were by small groups from abroad. We are not in this situation any more. There are nearly 1,200 French people who … are a danger to our country.”

Police identified the Paris-born brothers as suspects after an identity card belonging to Saïd, 34, was found in the getaway car.

Chérif, 32, was already on the police radar as he had served a prison sentence in 2008 for terror-related offences, after trying to recruit young soldiers to join the insurgency in Iraq.

A third suspect, 18-year-old Hamyd Mourad, handed himself in at a police station near Charleville-Mézières, Champagne, about 230km north-east of Paris, near the Belgian border at about 11pm yesterday.

BFMTV reported that the student had decided to go to the police after seeing his name on social media. Classmates of the teenager, however, have said he was in class at the time of the attack.

Eight of the victims of yesterday’s atrocity at the Charlie Hebdo offices were journalists with the magazine, including the publisher and lead cartoonist. A building maintenance worker, a visitor to the magazine and two policemen were also killed.

Image © French police