Seven arrested in hunt for Charlie Hebdo gunmen ‘trained in Yemen as assassins

Seven people have been arrested over the Charlie Hebdo massacre as two ‘armed and dangerous’ brothers with links to terrorist groups going back at least a decade today remained on the run.

As the manhunt for Cherif and Said Kouachi continued, their alleged getaway driver Hamyd Mourad, 18, turned himself into police in Charleville-Mezieres in northern France.

All three French-Algerian Muslims escaped yesterday following the bloodbath at the offices of the notoriously anti-Islamist satirical magazine in Paris.

In 2008, Cherif was sentenced to three years in prison for terror offences – but served just 18 months.

Questions will be asked why – once again – young Frenchmen with close links to radical Islam and its terrorist affiliates were apparently given free rein to carry out their crimes.

The fact that two were still at large almost 24 hours after a gun battle in which two policemen died alongside ten others, mainly magazine staff, was also a cause for huge concern.

In another development, two police officers have been shot by a man brandishing a machine gun on the outskirts of Paris, with one understood to be seriously injured.

The suspect, thought to be wearing a bullet-proof vest and body armour, attacked the municipal police officers in Châtillon just after 8am (7am GMT) as they attended a routine road incident. It is not known if the shooting is linked to the Charlie Hebdo attack.

Meanwhile, seven ‘friends and associates’ of the two main suspects in yesterday’s atrocity were detained in Reims, Charleville-Mezieres and the Paris area, police said.

Mailonline

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