Police are searching a 32,000 acre forest outside of Paris for the Charlie Hebdo killers.
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One witness has described the forest where Said Kouachi and Cherif Kouachi may have fled to as “bigger than Paris.”
ABC News reported:
Police in head-to-toe tactical gear and wearing body masks gathered near a forest outside of Paris today as the manhunt continued for the two suspected terrorists who killed a dozen people on Wednesday.
Individuals resembling the suspects were seen in Villers-Cotterêts, near Forêt de Retz, a 51-square-mile forest where police now searching, the French interior minister said.
Nine people are in custody so far and police have spoken to 90 witnesses, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said during a news conference today.
The forest is 50 miles east of a town where an apartment was searched Wednesday night, and Crépy-en-Valois, which police sealed off earlier today.
French police say the suspects — identified as French citizens Said Kouachi and Cherif Kouachi, brothers who are both in their 30s — are “on the loose, armed and dangerous.” A third suspect, Hamyd Mourad, 18, is cooperating after his surrender in the French town of Charleville-Mezieres, about 140 miles north of Paris, police said.
Said Kouachi lived in Reims and police found his ID, which he left in the Citroen getaway car, Cazeneuve said, adding that Cherif Kouachi lived in Paris, and he was sentenced to 3 years in jail for association with terrorist elements in 2008.
Paris Deputy Mayor Patrick Klugman told ABC News on Wednesday that two of the assailants went inside the offices of Charlie Hebdo and listed off the names of their targets before shooting them execution-style. The third man was waiting outside the building, Klugman said.
MANHUNT – Terror in Paris – ABC News