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Armed and masked anti-terrorism police swooped on woodland villages northeast of Paris on Thursday in a manhunt for two brothers suspected of being the Islamist gunmen who killed 12 people at a French satirical weekly.


A day after the Paris attack Jacob deGrom Mets Jersey , officers carried out house-to-house searches in the village of Corcy, a few km (miles) from a service station where police sources said the brothers were sighted in ski masks. Helicopters flew overhead.

Members of the French GIPN intervention police forces secure a neighbourhood in Corcy, northeast of Paris January 8, 2015. REUTERS

The fugitive suspects are French-born sons of Algerian-born parents, both in their early 30s Noah Syndergaard Mets Jersey , and 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".


United States and European sources close to the investigation said on Thursday that one of the brothers, Said Kouachi, was in Yemen in 2011 for a number of months training with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), one of the group's most active affiliates.


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 Said Kouachi and his brother Cherif Kouachi were listed in two U.S. security databases Michael Conforto Mets Jersey , a highly classified database containing information on 1.2 million possible counter-terrorism 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."


Dave Joly, a spokesman for the Terrorist Screening Center Asdrubal Cabrera Mets Jersey , said he could neither confirm nor deny if the Kouachis were listed in counter-terrorism databases.


On Thursday, U.S. President Barack Obama made an unannounced visit to the French Embassy in Washington to pay his respects.


He wrote in a condolence book, "As allies across the centuries, we stand united with our French brothers to ensure that justice is done and our way of life is defended. We go forward together knowing that terror is no match for freedom and ideals we stand for - ideals that light the world."


In Paris, a policewoman was killed in a shootout with a gunman wearing a bulletproof vest on Thursday morning David Wright Mets Jersey , setting a tense nation further on edge. Police sources were unable to say whether that incident was linked to the previous day's assault at the Charlie Hebdo weekly newspaper, but the authorities opened another terrorism investigation.


Bewildered and tearful French people held a national day of mourning. The bells of Notre Dame pealed for those killed in the attack on Charlie Hebdo, a left-leaning slayer of sacred cows whose cartoonists have been national figures since the Parisian counter-cultural heyday of the 1960s and 1970s.


The newspaper had been firebombed in the past for printing cartoons that poked fun at militant Islam and some that mocked the Prophet Muhammad himself. Two of those killed were police posted to protect the paper.


While world leaders described the attack as an assault on democracy, al Qaeda's North Africa branch praised the gunmen as "knight(s) of truth".


Many European newspapers either re-published Charlie Hebdo cartoons or lampooned the killers with images of their own.


Searches were taking place in Corcy and the nearby village of Longpont, set in thick forest and boggy marshland about 70 km north of Paris Mike Piazza Mets Jersey , but it was not clear whether the fugitives who had been spotted in the area were holed up or had moved on.


"We have not found them, there is no siege," an interior ministry official in Paris said.


Corcy residents looked bewildered as heavily armed policeman in ski masks and helmets combed the village meticulously from houses to garages and barns.


"We're hearing that the men could be in the forest, but there's no information so we're watching television to see," said Corcy villager Jacques.


In neighbouring Longpont Darryl Strawberry Mets Jersey , a resident said police had told villagers to stay indoors because the gunmen may have abandoned their car there. Anti-terrorism officers pulled back as darkness fell. The silence ?was broken by the sound of a forest owl.


Thursday's shooting of the policewoman on the streets of Paris's southern Montrouge district -- whether related or not -- caused more fear. Montrouge Mayor Jean-Loup Metton said the policewoman and a colleague came under fire while responding to a reported traffic accident. Witnesses said the assailant fled in a Renault Clio. Police sources said he wore a bullet-proof vest and had a an assault rifle and a handgun.


A police officer at the scene told Reuters he did not appear to resemble the Charlie Hebdo shooter suspects.


Prime Minister Manuel Valls, asked on RTL radio whether he feared a further attack, said: "That's obviously our main concern and that is why thousands of police and investigators