PARIS: Elite French police stormed a print works and a Jewish supermarket on Friday, killing two brothers wanted for the attack on a magazine and a gunman linked to them in a dramatic end to twin sieges that rocked France.

As shots and explosions rang out in the City of Light, five people, including the gunman, were found dead in the aftermath of the assault on the Jewish store in eastern Paris and several captives were freed.

A further four people were in critical condition after the raid, as ambulances raced to the scene, joining a jam of police vans, other emergency vehicles and helicopters buzzing overhead.

“It’s war!” screamed a mother as she dragged her daughter from the scene.

An eyewitness said he saw at least one body lying at the scene, where the sliding glass door of the shop was completely shattered.

The dramatic climax to the two standoffs brought to an end more than 48 hours of fear and uncertainty that began when the two brothers slaughtered 12 people at satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in the bloodiest attack on French soil in half a century.

The weekly had lampooned jihadists and repeatedly published cartoons of the Holy Prophet (pbuh).

Virginie Handani, 35, a woman living in an apartment two storeys above the supermarket, said she heard “two big bangs and gunfire that lasted around a minute” when the assault started.

ALL GUNS BLAZING: About 30 kilometres to the northeast, in a small town called Dammartin-en-Goele, the two Charlie Hebdo gunmen staged a desperate escape bid, charging out of the building all guns blazing at the security forces before being cut down in their tracks.

Police confirmed their identity as Cherif and Said Kouachi, French-born orphans of Algerian origin.

The other hostage-taker in the eastern Porte de Vincennes area of Paris was also suspected of gunning down a policewoman in southern Paris on Thursday and knew at least one of the Charlie Hebdo gunmen.

French police released mug shots of the man, Amedy Coulibaly, 32, as well as a woman named as 26-year-old Hayat Boumeddiene, also wanted over the shooting of the policewoman.

The Vincennes area was swamped with police who shut down the city’s ring road as well as schools and shops in the area. Authorities ordered residents to stay indoors.

In Dammartin-en-Goele, only 12 kilometres from Paris’s main Charles de Gaulle airport, French elite forces had deployed snipers on roofs and helicopters buzzed low over the small printing business where the Charlie Hebdo suspects had been cornered early on Friday.

Published in Dawn January 10th , 2014

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