With the perpetrators of the massacre at Charlie Hebdo cornered in a printing shop outside of Paris a few miles from Charles DeGaulle Airport, a new hostage situation arose this morning when two other gunmen (one a female) entered a kosher supermarket in southeastern Paris and took hostages. The latter gunmen are believed to have killed a female Paris police officer yesterday, and reportedly belonged to the same radical cell that has link to al Qaeda in Yemen.
In addition to police SWAT teams, France's elite special forces / anti-terrorism organization, GIGN, has a significant presence at both hostage locations, and are reported to be in contact with the suspects.
UPDATE: Coordinated assaults by French special forces have resulted in the Kouachi brothers, who committed the massacre at Charlie Hebdo, and the hostage taker at the kosher supermarket being killed. Reports indicate that most hostages were unharmed, but they're preliminary in nature.
UPDATE II: The AP is reporting that 4 hostages in the kosher market were killed, along with the gunman. The gunman's wife is at large and is the subject of a nationwide manhunt.
(photo: French soldiers stationed at the Eiffel Tower; Reuters/Gonzalo Fuentes)
