Charlie Hebdo attackers killed along with second Paris shootout assailant

The three-day manhunt for the terrorists behind the Charlie Hebdo murders in Paris reached a violent end today as police stormed two locations where hostages were being held.

French authorities feared more terror and deaths as some suspects are still at large, and are probably armed and desperate.

The brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, said to be behind Wednesday's massacre of 12 journalists and policemen, were both killed after they came out shooting following a six-hour siege at a printworks. Their sole hostage survived.

In another encounter, Amedy Coulibaly, who took 19 people hostage in a Jewish grocery store in Paris, was also killed when police stormed the building a short while later. Four hostages died during the shootout, while 15 were rescued.

As dawn broke over the Forest of Retz on Friday, the French police were already confident that the net would soon be closing on the Charlie Hebdo terrorists.

Having sheltered overnight from the rain and bitter temperatures in their hijacked Renault Clio, the Kouachi brothers remained hidden in the woodland 50 miles east of Paris, but the police were confident of getting them by daylight.

Said, 34, and Cherif, 32, had proved with their ruthless behaviour following the Charlie Hebdo massacre that they would attempt to kill any policeman who came within range. Over the course of Wednesday and Thursday, they had also proven adept at staying one step ahead of the authorities.

The wives of the Kouachi brothers, along with their sister, were questioned by police but could not provide any useful pointers to where they might be headed.

In appalling weather, reinforcements continued arriving from Paris as hundreds of officers flooded the area.

Shortly after 8 am, the brothers broke cover, emerging from woods near the village of Montagny-Sainte-Felicite and lying in wait at the side of a country road which, inexplicably, had remained open.

At 8.10 am GMT a local woman was driving to work in her Peugeot 206 when she spotted two men dressed in black clothing standing in the road. One of them was carrying a large, long bag. As she slowed down she realised to her horror that she was staring at the men responsible for the Paris atrocity.

Brandishing a rocket launcher and gun, the killers forced her to stop and pulled her from the driver's seat. They told her to get into the back of the car and then they set off along the road in the direction of Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport.

Showing perhaps their only act of mercy, the brothers pulled over after a short distance and told the woman to get out, ending her ordeal.

Jean-Paul Douet, 62, mayor of Montagny-Sainte-Felicite, which has a population of just 427, said, ''One of our local teachers witnessed the whole thing. She was driving to work when the car right in front of her was stopped by two men on foot and clearly carrying weapons in a bag.

''They had dumped the Renault Clio that police have been hunting for the past two days, around 100 yards away on the village outskirts on a forest path.

''It seems they kept the same vehicle the whole time and had not abandoned it earlier as was suggested.''

By the time armed officers arrived on the scene just a few minutes later, the brothers had vanished, managing once again to slip through police lines, this time to an industrial park around four miles away on the outskirts of Dammartin-en-Goele.

The Peugeot pulled off the road and into the Pres-Boucher industrial estate, where the brothers selected a printing works called Creation Tendance Decouverte as their new base. Only one employee was at work at the time, and he was taken hostage.

Minutes later the terrorists had the composure and the presence of mind to fool a visitor into thinking they were policemen.

A salesman called Didier, who had an appointment at the print works shortly after the terrorists arrived, described unwittingly shaking hands with one of the gunmen.

He told France Inter radio, "When I arrived my client came out with an armed man who said he was from the police. My client told me to leave so I left."

Naming his client as "Michel", he added, "I was in front of the door. I shook Michel's hand and I shook the hand of one of the terrorists."

The black-clad gunman, wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying a Kalashnikov, told him: "Leave, we don't kill civilians anyhow."

Roads were closed off to the public and armed police ordered journalists to turn back if they got too close to the search area, warning them it was too dangerous for them to be there.

In lashing rain, armed police massed at the scene in ever-increasing numbers, backed up by five helicopters and even a tank.

At Charles de Gaulle airport, aircraft were diverted to avoid flying over the area because the two gunmen were reported to have a rocket launcher, meaning they posed a danger to air traffic.

A violent exchange of gunfire between the police and the terrorists was reported at 9.15, with police vehicles being hit but no reports of casualties. If police had been in any doubt that they would have to kill the terrorists to bring the siege to an end, the position was made clear when a hostage negotiator managed to speak to them by phone.

''We want to die like martyrs,'' they told him.

The terrorists had the advantage of mirrored windows at the printworks, meaning they could see out, but the police could not see in.

Around 1,000 children were evacuated from two primary and two secondary schools nearby. Some were heard shouting "Charlie! Charlie!" It seemed that the endgame of the three-day hunt for the terrorists was near.

Second shootout

But just before 12.30, events took another unexpected and horrific turn. In Porte de Vincennes, eastern Paris, gunfire was heard at a kosher grocery shop called Hypercacher. Police quickly confirmed the worst: a gunman had taken hostages inside the store and suddenly two hostage crises were running in tandem.

Amid the drama surrounding the hunt for the Charlie Hebdo killers, the fact that police were still investigating the murderer of a policewoman in a separate incident on Thursday had been all but forgotten.

Her killer, it now turned out, had also been on the run and had returned to cause more bloodshed on the streets of Paris.

Police named him as Amedy Coulibaly, 32, a member of the same ''19th arrondissement'' terrorist cell as the Kouachi brothers, and, like them, a disciple of Djamel Beghal, an extremist once based at Finsbury Park Mosque in north London.

Following confusion over who had shot dead 27-year-old policewoman Clarissa Jean-Philippe in Paris on Thursday morning, Coulibaly had re-armed, regrouped and chosen his next target.

After reports that his real target on Thursday, when he killed Miss Jean-Philippe, had been a nearby Jewish primary school, Coulibaly deliberately selected a grocery store in a Jewish district of Paris which is usually bustling with shoppers as the Sabbath approached.

Having wounded and possibly killed customers as he took his hostages, he was holding 19 people prisoner inside the store. Police named his girlfriend Hayat Boumeddiene, 26, as another suspect, though it was unclear whether she was at the scene or not. Both were described as ''armed and dangerous''.