French anti-terrorist police surrounded a small northern town on Friday and helicopters hovered overhead as two suspects in Wednesday's terrorist attack at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo barricaded themselves in a printing house, having taken at least one hostage, French authorities reported. The standoff followed a high-speed car chase along the nearby A2 motorway toward Paris as authorities appeared to be closing in on the two brothers. Gunshots rang out and police trucks, ambulances and armored vehicles descended on the area close to Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport. Police and anti-terrorist forces cordoned off the town of about 8,000, clearly seeking to limit the scale of any potential siege. "All residents are requested to remain at home. Children are to be kept safe in school," the municipal website said. The danger of hostage taking or of a second attack has been a central concern for security forces since the gunmen stormed the Paris offices of the satirical weekly on Wednesday, killing ten journalists and two police officers, including the chief editor and cartoonist who had been under armed guard due to threats on his life after having published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. His police bodyguard also died in the attack, which began during an editorial meeting. Brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi were named as the chief suspects after Said's identity card was left behind in their abandoned getaway car. On Friday, they barricaded themselves inside the Creation Tendance Decouverte building -- a printing house. Xavier Castaing, the chief Paris police spokesman, and town hall spokeswoman Audrey Taupenas said there appeared to be one hostage inside. The police official, who was on the scene, confirmed a hostage. According a French official, phone contact had been made with the suspects. A senior Yemeni intelligence source told Reuters one of the two suspects, French-born sons of Algerian-born parents, was in Yemen for several months in 2011 for religious studies; but there was no confirmed information whether he was trained by Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. The gunmen shouted "Allahu akbar" ("God is greatest") as they carried out the attack, which has been described by French President Francois Hollande and other world leaders as an attack on the foundation of democracy. The fugitive suspects are both in their early 30s, and were already under police surveillance. One was jailed for 18 months for trying to travel to Iraq a decade ago to fight as part of an Islamist cell. Police said they were "armed and dangerous". A Yemeni official familiar with the matter said the Yemen government was aware of the possibility of a connection between Said Kouachi and AQAP, and was looking into any possible links. U.S. government sources said the two suspects were listed in two U.S. security databases, a highly classified database containing information on 1.2 million possible counterterrorism suspects, called TIDE, and the much smaller "no fly" list maintained by the Terrorist Screening Center, an interagency unit. U.S. television network ABC reported that the brothers had been listed in the databases for "years."
