BY CASSANDRA VINOGRAD, NANCY ING, ALASTAIR JAMIESON AND ED KIERNAN
(NBC NEWS.COM) Security forces stormed the sites of two hostage standoffs in France on Friday — one at a printing plant, where the two brothers suspected in the Charlie Hebdo terror attack were holed up, and the other at a kosher market in Paris.
French media outlets reported that the brothers, Cherif and Said Kouachi, were killed in the raids. NBC News could not immediately confirm the reports.
Almost simultaneously, explosions and gunfire rang out in both places in what appeared to be the delicate and highly dangerous conclusion to the spasm of terror that has gripped France for more than two days.
A prosecutor’s spokeswoman said that the hostage-taker at the kosher market was “most likely” Amedy Coulibaly, 32, wanted in connection with the fatal shooting of a woman police officer in Paris on Thursday.
The Associated Press, citing an unnamed police official, reported that the gunman had been holding at least five people inside the market and had threatened to kill them if police stormed the printing plant, about 25 miles away.
There, in the countryside town of Dammartin-en-Goele, police had cornered the Kouachi brothers, who are suspected of gunning down 12 people at the satirical magazine on Wednesday in the worst terror attack in France in decades.
The AP report could not immediately be confirmed by NBC News.
At the printing plant, Mayor Bernard Torneille said there could be more than one hostage. Five to seven people are there during business hours, he said.
The suspects were spotted by police driving in the town about 9:30 a.m. local time, or 3:30 a.m. ET. Authorities said that shots had been fired. Helicopters hovered overhead, and hundreds of police and special forces circled.
Yves Albarello, a French lawmaker, was quoted by the French TV station i-Tele as saying that the Kouachi brothers had told police they wanted to “die as martyrs.” The report could not immediately be confirmed by NBC News.
Authorities locked down schools nearby. At one, the Lycee Charles de Gaulle, about 500 students were being kept inside.
“We are all scared,” one student, Angelina Monzili, 16, told NBC News. “We came to school expecting a normal day. We were told that the terrorists are really close. Our families are worried about us. We saw police cars flying past, and ambulances.”
People who live in the area were to told to stay away from windows, turn off lights and stay indoors. “It’s basically a war zone in Dammartin-en-Goele,” one witness told BFM TV.
Hours later, in Paris itself, a gunman seized a kosher grocery and took an unknown number of hostages. Agnes Thibeau, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office, suggested there were many people inside the market because it was the morning before the Jewish Sabbath, which begins Friday night.
Many ambulances were outside the market. Two of them sped away with sirens on, but it was not clear whether anyone had left the supermarket. Police asked all businesses nearby to close.
Police issued an alert for Coulibaly and for Hayat Boumeddiene, 26, in the officer’s killing.
Nearly 100,000 security personnel were on alert across France.
Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport told NBC News that some aircraft coming into land had been redirected to its southern two runways, which are further away from Dammartin-en-Goele. “The town is a little bit too close to the airport,” a spokesman said.
In the tense hours after the Charlie Hebdo attack, profiles began to emerge of the Kouachi brothers, who were known to French and American counterterrorism officials.
Two senior U.S. counterterrorism officials told NBC News that Said Kouachi, 34, traveled to Yemen in 2011 to be trained by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which is considered the most violent branch of the terror network.
Cherif Kouachi, 32, was sentenced to prison in 2008 after a Paris court found him and six other men guilty of helping funnel fighters to Iraq. A Homeland Security official told NBC News that the brothers had been on the U.S. no-fly list “for years.”
On Thursday, elite anti-terrorist forces converged on several villages after two masked robbers with machine guns matching the Kouachi brothers’ description held up a gas station in Villers-Cotteret, France.
Charlie Hebdo’s offices had been firebombed in the past after publishing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. The publication’s chief editor — who was known as Charb — was an outspoken supporter of free speech who had reportedly been put on an al Qaeda hit list. He was among those slain.
NBC News’ Alexander Smith, Nikolai Miller, Jason Cumming, Richard Engel, Robert Windrem and Pete Williams, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report. Nancy Ing reported from Paris. Alastair Jamieson reported from London.
Culled From NBCNEWS.COM
