PARIS // A huge manhunt for two brothers suspected of massacring 12 people in a terrorist attack at a satirical French weekly zeroed in on a northern town Thursday after the discovery of one of the getaway cars.
As thousands of police tightened their net, the country marked a national day of mourning for Wednesday’s attack at Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris, the worst terrorist incident in France for half a century.
The discovery of the car, abandoned in the northern town of Villers-Cotterets, was a breakthrough in the frantic police hunt.
Earlier reports said that the two fugitives, still armed, had been spotted at a petrol station in the same area.
A source close to the case also said that Molotov cocktails and jihadist-style flags had been discovered in another vehicle used by the attackers that was abandoned in Paris soon after Wednesday’s assault.
With emotions running high, bells tolled across France at midday, public transport stopped and people gathered outside the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo in the pouring rain, holding aloft banners reading “Je Suis Charlie” (I am Charlie).
Thousands of people gathered in the streets to mark a minute of silence and television footage showed children at a Muslim school in Lille holding up sheets of paper emblazoned “not in my name”.
Across the world, crowds also gathered from Moscow to Washington under the banner “I am Charlie” to show support for the controversial magazine.
As police chased the gunmen, several incidents rocked the jittery nation, although it was not clear whether they were linked to Wednesday’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 mosques were also fired at after Wednesday’s attacks, prosecutors said.
Declaring Thursday a national day of mourning — only the fifth in the last 50 years — President Francois Hollande called the Charlie Hebdo bloodbath “an act of exceptional barbarity”.
National television ran constant live coverage of the manhunt for the masked, black-clad gunmen, who shouted “Allahu Akbar” (“God is greatest”) while killing some of France’s most outspoken journalists, as well as two policemen.
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 Wednesday’s attack.
Police were using forensic evidence and an ID car found in a car abandoned by the gunmen after the attack.
Mourad Hamyd, an 18-year-old suspected of being an accomplice in the attack, handed himself in, with police sources saying he had seen his name circulating on social media.
* Agencies
