French Manhunt Intensifies in #CharlieHebdo Massacre

At the Wall Street Journal, "Charlie Hebdo Attack: Police Actively Searching Area North of Paris: Thousands of Troops, Police Mobilized; Suspects Were on Terror Watch Lists":

PARIS—Tens of thousands of soldiers and police mobilized across France on Thursday amid a manhunt for two brothers who allegedly killed 12 people in a gruesome attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine, as anxious Parisians stopped for a moment of silence to honor the dead.

President François Hollande raised the terror alert in an area north of Paris where the search was concentrated, after two men matching the description of the suspects were spotted at a gas station. But the two—both of whom have been on watch lists of possible terrorists for years—remained at large.

U.S. and French intelligence believe that one of the two gunmen had received weapons training from an al Qaeda offshoot in Yemen in 2011, U.S. officials said. They added that they haven’t found any intelligence that the group, known as al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, directed, ordered or monitored Wednesday’s attack.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve invited top U.S. and European law-enforcement and counterterrorism officials to Paris this weekend to discuss terror threats, amid concerns that the gunmen appeared to have some military acumen.

Nine people, including relatives of the two suspects, were detained for questioning by police in relation to the investigation, Mr. Cazeneuve told a news conference in Paris, without elaborating.

The two suspects in Wednesday’s spree of violence were identified as 34-year-old Said Kouachi and his brother, Chérif Kouachi, 32, both French citizens. Mr. Cazeneuve said both were known to French security and were under surveillance, but no incriminating evidence had been gathered on them.

The minister said the elder brother had been formally identified from a photograph as one of the attackers. His national identity card was found in an abandoned Citroën that had been used as a getaway car.

While Said Kouachi had no police record, his brother had been sentenced to 18 months in prison in 2008 for being part of a terror group, prosecutors said.

Both have been in a U.S. database of suspected terrorists—and on the U.S. no-fly list—for years as well. For the younger brother, that was due to his conviction in France, while the other’s name had surfaced in other terrorism-related probes, according to U.S. officials.

A third suspect identified by police turned himself in late Wednesday. His relationship to the others was unclear.

Helicopters buzzed across the region north of Paris early Thursday after two men resembling the Kouachi brothers were spotted near the town of Villers-Cotterêts, about 50 miles from the capital. But by midafternoon French television showed most of the police had left...

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