PARIS: At least five people, including the attacker, have died at a kosher grocery in Paris where a gunman took several hostages.

French President Francois Hollande confirmed that four hostages were killed in the siege.

“It is indeed an appalling anti-Semitic act that was committed,” he said of the hostage-taking by a gunman at the Hyper Cacher supermarket in the Vincennes district.

Hollande called for national unity and said the country should remain “implacable” in the face of racism and anti-Semitism.

Security forces stormed the grocery minutes after their counterparts assaulted the building outside Paris where two brothers suspected in the Charlie Hebdo killings had holed up.

Read also: Charlie Hebdo suspects killed as French siege ends

Explosions and gunshots were heard after the police force stormed the grocery store where the gunman was holding at least five people hostages.

Several hostages were freed after French commandos stormed the Jewish supermarket, AFP reported.

After several explosions, police stormed the shop in Portes de Vincennes and several hostages exited the store shortly afterwards and were taken to safety.

The dead gunman is suspected of being the same man who killed a policewoman in southern Paris on Thursday.

A police official says the gunman had threatened to kill hostages if the police launched an assault on the cornered assailants.

The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the dual hostage takings, described the events as “clearly linked."

A police source had told Reuters earlier the gunman had been a member of the same jihadist group as the two suspects in the attack at weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

The police source said the man was equipped with automatic weapons.

A police official, who was not authorized to speak about the situation, told AP the gunman opened fire in the market and declared "you know who I am."

The Guardian quoted an eyewitness to the siege as saying, “There was an individual - African - who had a Kalashnikov ... and he immediately went into the deli and he started shooting with his Kalashnikov.”

The police had named two suspects wanted in connection with the second siege at the kosher supermarket.

They are Amedy Coulibaly and Hayat Boumeddiene. Police did not specify whether both had been at the scene.

Boumeddiene had been Coulibaly’s partner since 2010 and lived in his home while he was serving a prison sentence, Le Monde said.

Coulibaly knew at least one of the suspects in the Charlie Hebdo massacre, a source told AFP.

He was seen with Charlie Hebdo suspect Cherif Kouachi in 2010 during an investigation into an attempted prison break in France.

The man they were trying to break out was Algerian militant Smain Ait Ali Belkacem, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2002 for a bombing at the Musee d'Orsay metro station in Paris in October 1995 that left around 30 injured.

Coulibaly was convicted for his role and was well-known to anti-terrorist police.

Le Monde reported that Coulibaly and Kouachi were two of the most committed followers of convicted terrorist Djamel Beghal. Telephone conversations reveal that the pair visited Beghal’s home in the south of France.