Paris gunman 'threatens to kill hostages'

The official described the dual hostage situations as “clearly linked”.

Several people had been wounded when the gunman opened fire in the market this afternoon and were able to flee and get medical care, the official said.

It was not clear whether there were other wounded inside the market, or whether the woman listed as the gunman’s accomplice in a police bulletin was inside with him.

Paris police earlier released a photo of Amedy Coulibaly as a suspect in the killing yesterday of a policewoman, and the official named him as the man holed up in the market. He said some hostages have been gravely wounded.

He said a second suspect, a woman named Hayet Boumddiene, is the gunman’s accomplice.

A woman has told how she received a phone call from her mother, who she claimed is being held hostage in the shop in Porte de Vincennes.

She told Europe 1: “She called me and told me: ’I am in the shop, I love you’.

“I am scared. Someone told me there have been two deaths. No one has told me if it is my mother or not.”

The man opened fire in the market today and declared: “You know who I am”, the police official said.

The supermarket in question was named in reports as the Hypercacher Vincennes.

Police have ordered all shops closed in a famed Jewish neighbourhood in central Paris, far from the two developing hostage situations.

The mayor’s office in Paris announced the closures of shops along the Rosiers street in Paris’s Marais neighbourhood, in the heart of the tourist district and about a kilometre away from the offices of newspaper Charlie Hebdo where 12 people were killed on Wednesday.

Hours before the Jewish Sabbath, the street is usually especially crowded with shoppers – French Jews and tourists alike.

The events near Paris’s Porte de Vincennes took place as two suspects in France’s deadliest terror attack in decades were cornered near Charles de Gaulle airport.

#KouachiBrothers holding one hostage, French Interior Ministry says, according to France Info radio http://t.co/7Bxdhozq4H

— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) January 9, 2015

France has been on high alert for more attacks since the country’s worst terror attack in decades – the massacre on Wednesday in Paris that left 12 people dead at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

Authorities around Europe have warned of the threat posed by the return of Western jihadis trained in warfare.

France counts at least 1,200 citizens in the war zone in Syria – headed there, returned or dead.

Both IS and al Qaida have threatened France, home to Western Europe’s largest Muslim population.