French security forces tighten net on massacre suspects

Elite French security forces tightened the net today on two brothers suspected of slaughtering 12 people in an Islamist attack after discovering an abandoned getaway car in a northeastern town.
Helicopters buzzed overhead as police mounted a frantic manhunt for the two fugitives thought to be behind the bloodbath at Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris, the worst terrorist attack in France for half a century.
Earlier they had been identified -- reportedly masked and armed -- at a petrol station near the town of Villers- Cotterets, 80 kilometres from the French capital, before fleeing again.
An AFP reporter saw 20 heavily armed security force officers surround a nearby house and storm it, keeping journalists away from the scene.

Islamic State, the militant group sowing terror across swathes of Iraq and Syria and calling for global jihad, hailed the brothers as "heroes" on its Al-Bayan radio station.
This was the first reaction by the jihadists to yesterday's massacre in which the fugitive brothers allegedly said they were taking revenge for Charlie Hebdo's repeated publication of cartoons seen by many Muslims as sacrilegious.

In a further sign of the attackers' motives, a source close to the case said that Molotov cocktails and jihadist-style flags had been discovered in another getaway vehicle used by the attackers.
A maximum security alert declared in the capital yesterday was expanded to the region where today's manhunt took place.

Arrest warrants were issued for Cherif Kouachi, 32, a known jihadist convicted in 2008 for involvement in a network sending fighters to Iraq, and his 34-year-old brother Said. Both were born in Paris and are French nationals of Algerian origin.
The two men were likely to be "armed and dangerous", authorities warned.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said seven other people had been detained in the hunt for the brothers.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls, meanwhile, told French radio the two suspects were known to intelligence services and were "no doubt" being tracked before yesterday's attack.
Meanwhile, several other incidents rocked the jittery nation, although it was not clear whether they were linked to yesterday's attack.

Just south of Paris, a man shot dead a policewoman and wounded a city employee with an automatic rifle -- an act that prosecutors said they were treating as terrorism.
There was an explosion at a kebab shop in eastern France, with no casualties immediately reported. And two Muslim places of worship were also fired at in the wake of yesterday's attacks, prosecutors said.