Three French terror suspects are dead at two separate hostage standoff locations, according to the City Hall of Dammartin and the French ambassador to the U.S.
The hostage at Dammartin -- held by two Charlie Hebdo attack suspects -- is alive, the City Hall of Dammartin said. Some hostages were seen fleeing the Paris supermarket, but officials later said that four hostages were killed there.
The dramatic developments came after sustained gunfire and small explosions erupted at both hostage situations in France, two days after a massacre at the Paris offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.
There were at least four explosions and a barrage of gunfire at the kosher market in Paris today and then police were seen going in. People then were seen coming out of the market, and ambulances and firetrucks drove towards the market, loaded people in and drove away.
The two simultaneous hostage-takings in France were linked, with suspected gunmen in each situation connected through an earlier attempt to break a convicted terrorist out of jail, Paris' public prosecutor told ABC News.
Amedi Coulibaly, 32, a suspect in a Thursday fatal shooting of a police officer in Paris' Monrouge area, was believed to be involved with the hostage standoff at a kosher grocery, police said. Coulibaly was convicted for his involvement in an attempt to help a convicted terrorist escape custody, while Cherif Kouachi -- a suspected gunman in Wednesday's massacre -- was released.
The man they were accused of trying to free from prison was Smain Ali Belkacem, one of those behind the 1995 attack on the Paris transport system that killed eight people and wounded 120, according to the Paris public prosecutor.
Officials have identified Kouachi and his brother Said Kouachi as suspects in the attack that killed 12 people. The suspected gunmen were holed up earlier today in a printing company in a town northeast of Paris, taking one male employee hostage, said Audrey Taupenas, a spokeswoman for Dammartin-en-Goele City Hall.
A French TV channel, BFM-TV, reported that it spoke to two of the hostage takers during the sieges in eastern and northern Paris. Cherif Kouachi claimed he had been "commissioned" by Al Qaeda in Yemen and been trained by the U.S. cleric, Anwar Al Awaki, according to the TV station. He also told the station that "we are defenders of the prophet."
BFM-TV also said Coulibaly, the supermarket gunman, called the station at 3 p.m. local time and claimed he had "synchronized" his attack with the Kouachi brothers. He told the station he belonged to ISIS.
Police have issued a wanted poster for a female suspect, identified as Hayat Boumeddiene.
As helicopters and hundreds of security forces streamed to Dammartin -- located about 20 miles northeast of Paris -- in an effort to detain the massacre suspects, the second hostage situation unfolded at the grocery, sending heavily armed SWAT teams to Porte de Vincennes in Paris.
Dammartin officials posted a message online instructing residents to shelter in place.
"If you live in the town stay in your home. Children in schools are in lockdown," the statement reads.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve later told French TV that the printing workshop's owner, Michel Catalano, hid when the Kouachi brothers burst into the workshop -- and throughout the siege, while the police knew he was in hiding, the Kouachi brothers weren't aware he was there.
About 900 people were trapped in a nearby high school earlier today. "They say to us to stay in the high school and be calm, but we can’t because we are really scared," teacher Marianne Genet said.
Two assailants went inside the offices of
on Wednesday and listed off the names of their targets before shooting them execution-style, Paris Deputy Mayor Patrick Klugman told ABC News on Wednesday. A third man was waiting outside the building, he said.
After the shooting, more than a thousand troops were deployed on the streets of France as part of the country's heightened state of alert.
"France isn't done with the threats it is targeted with," French President Francoise Hollande said during an evening TV statement. "We call on vigilance, unity and mobilization."
"We are a free people that doesn't give in to any pressure," he added. "We carry an ideal that is larger than us. We will defend it everywhere that peace is threatened."
