A day after recognizing the fatal shooting of a police officer in a Paris suburb as an act of terror, French authorities on Friday connected the incident to the attack on satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.
A female police officer responding to a traffic accident was fatally shot by a gunman Thursday in Montrouge. A maintenance worker was also injured.
Witnesses gave differing accounts of what the shooter looked like, but the suspect appears to have been outfitted similarly to the gunmen in Wednesday’s attack on Charlie Hebdo. Witnesses said the shooter wore a bulletproof vest over black clothing and carried an automatic weapon.
A police source told Reuters that the suspect in the Montrouge shooting was a member of the same jihadist cell as the Charlie Hebdo suspects, Cherif and Said Kouachi, and knew the brothers.
Authorities have not named the suspect in the Montrouge killing. But Reuters reported that the suspect was sentenced in 2010 in connection with the same botched jailbreak of Islamist Smain Ait Ali Belkacemthat in which Cherif Kouachi was also implicated, though not charged.
French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve confirmed Friday morning that “important elements” had been discovered in the Montrouge shooting, according to The Guardian.
Later Friday, French police released the names and images of two suspects in the shooting, Hayat Boumeddiene, a woman, and Amedy Coulibaly, a man, as a hostage situation developed in a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris:
SECOND Appel à témoins #Fusillade #Montrouge Contacter le 0805 02 17 17.
En savoir plus >>> http://t.co/8c2UJGQQJy pic.twitter.com/n5h5e6Yb1b
— Préfecture de police (@prefpolice) January 9, 2015
This post has been updated.
