Police are continuing to hunt for the "armed and dangerous" girlfriend of one of the gunmen in the Paris massacres - after three days of terror in the French capital ended in dramatic police shoot-outs yesterday.
French authorities are still searching for 26-year-old Hayat Boumeddiene, the girlfriend and suspected accomplice of Amedy Coulibaly, who held 19 people hostage inside a Kosher supermarket in Eastern Paris yesterday, before dying in a hail of bullets.
Elite armed officers clad all in black stormed the Hypercasher Vincennes supermarket and television footage shows the moment Coulibaly runs out of the store firing, and is taken down by a volley of bullets.
Boumeddiene is missing and thought to be dangerous
Boumeddiene is believed to be on the run after the pair were linked to brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, who killed 12 people at satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. They were shot dead by police yesterday afternoon after a tense stand-off on an industrial estate.
Prosecutor Francois Molins last night said Coulibaly and his girlfriend spoke with the Kouachi brothers "500 times" over the telephone.
Boumeddiene is also thought to be involved with Coulibaly in the murder of a female police officer south of Paris on Thursday morning.
French newspaper Le Monde claims this is a 2010 photo of Boumeddiene with a crossbow
Boumeddiene was interrogated by French police in 2010, according to reports
Boumeddiene is of Algerian descent and a former cashier, who was radicalised by partner Coulibaly and left her job in 2009, The Daily Mail reports.
She is known the French police for allegedly associating with convicted terrorists and told them she visited Djamel Beghal, a convicted al Qaeda terrorist under house arrest in southern France, for “crossbow practice”.
The Mail reports she said she was inspired by her 'husband' (Coulibaly and Boumeddiene married in a relgious ceremony but not a formally recognised legal ceremony) and "read a lot of books on religion".
"When I saw the massacre of the innocents in Palestine, in Iraq, in Chetchna, in Afghanistan or anywhere the Americans sent their bombers, all that…well, who are the terrorists?" she is reported to have told police.
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Details have emerged of the dramatic end to the two sieges which had plunged France into terror for a third day.
The Kouachis brothers had been on the run for two days after gunning down 12 people at the satirical magazine on Wednesday morning.
They were tracked to a stretch of forest and eventually cornered to a print works around 30 miles outside of Paris.
There they took a man hostage, but unknown to them another man was hidden underneath a sink in the building and able to direct the police to the killers using his mobile phone.
Dramatic footage from the Kouachis' and Coulibaly's final moments were played out on television screens.
Flashes of light accompanied the rapid gunfire in dramatic scenes which last for about 10 seconds.
Minutes before the explosions, balaclava-clad officers were seen moving towards the building.
The brothers, who were directed to carry out the terror attack by a member of al Qaida's branch in Yemen, reportedly emerged from the building firing guns but were both shot dead by police.
Meanwhile, in Paris, armed police surrounded a Jewish supermarket where Coulibaly, 32, was holding men women and children hostage.
There were 19 people inside the store when Coulibaly entered. He killed four people immediately while the others are said to have sought safety in a cold store room in the basement, huddled together as they endured sub zero temperatures.
Police were able to hear what was happening inside through a telephone left off the hook and seized upon the moment the terrorist knelt down for evening prayers to storm the building in a volley of rapid fire and smoke.
They killed him as he attempted to flee, and the 15 hostages dashed out to freedom.
In what would become one of the most poignant images of the three-day massacre, grief-stricken hostages, including children, were seen huddled together and being led quickly to safety as members of the public and media were urged to move back. Another was carried in a fireman's lift following the four-and-a-half-hour ordeal.