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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. It was unclear how many of the hostages at the Paris supermarket survived, though some of them were seen fleeing the site.
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.
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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.
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.
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