AFP:
14:05 GMT - Witness escape - Some witnesses to the shootings at the kosher grocery targeted by a hostage-taker in Paris’s Porte de Vincennes have managed to escape, a source close to the investigations tells AFP.
The hostage-taker burst into the mini-supermarket at around 13:00pm local time armed with two machine guns. He opened fire, the source adds, killing “at least two” and taking “at least five people hostage”.
14:05 GMT - Coulibaly - The man holding hostages in Vincennes knew at least one of the suspects in the Charlie Hebdo massacre, a source tells AFP.
Amedy Coulibaly, 32, was seen with Charlie Hebdo suspect Cherif Kouachi in 2010 during an investigation into an attempted prison break in France. Coulibaly was convicted for his role and was well-known to anti-terrorist police.
14:05 GMT - PARIS HOSTAGE-TAKER ‘KNEW’ CHARLIE HEBDO KILLER: SOURCE
Sky:
Jamie Grierson@HomeAffairsPA
It is now understood Kouachi brothers were on British watch and no-fly list to stop them entering UK or passing through British airport.
8:58 AM - 9 Jan 2015
Telegraph:
15.09 Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has ordered Mossad to provide French officials for all the assistance they need in tackling the ongoing terror situation in and around Paris:
BREAKING: PM Netanyahu orders Israeli MFA & Mossad to give French government all the assistance needed in fighting terror wave in Paris
Reuters:
HuffPost UK
@HuffPostUK
Six month-old baby reportedly among Paris kosher supermarket hostages http://t.co/nJv3pPNUoLhttp://t.co/yLoVDd7Uc4
Guardian:
The hostage situation at the kosher supermarket in Paris was being followed closely by Israel’s government which has offered assistance to the French government, writes Peter Beaumont in Jerusalem.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a conference call with senior security and diplomatic officials to be briefed on the unfolding situation although it is understood no Israeli citizens are among the hostages.
Ordering the tightening of security at Israel’s diplomatic missions and associated offices, earlier in the day Netanyahu – who has compared events in France to the threat he says Israelis are facing – issued a statement saying: “My message, in Paris, in Jerusalem, anywhere: first rule in fighting terrorism is to refuse to be afraid.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that Jerusalem was following the developments in Paris with great concern.
The Paris attacks “are not just against the French people or French Jews, they’re against the entire free world,” Lieberman said in a statement.
“This is another attempt by the dark forces of radical Islam to unleash horror and terror on the West. The entire international community must stand strong and determined in the face of this terror,” Lieberman added.
Telegraph:
15.19 Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has spoken out against the Charlie Hebdo attack:
Quote I think it is a challenge to all of us to maintain the values on which we have lived over the years, which we have developed out of years of censorship and oppression and religious violence, and to say that the way we live, with the confidence that enables us to satirise, to mock, is a good and important value in our society.
It doesn’t mean that we will always agree with the satirising, but we have to be confident that our values are good values in this.
They enable oppression and cruelty to be challenged, whether it is coming from the Church or anywhere else and we must not be afraid.
This is a moment for courage.
15.16 The police have just lifted the roadblock on the road that runs through the forest where the Kouachi brothers were thought to have been hiding out overnight and then hijacked a car.