REUTERS/Jacky NaegelenPolice officers secure access to a residential building during investigations in the eastern French city of Reims January 8, 2015.An 18-year old man sought by police over Wednesday's shooting attack at satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo handed himself voluntarily to police in northeastern France, an official at the Paris prosecutor's office said.
French police are staging a huge manhunt for attackers who escaped by car after shooting dead some of France's top cartoonists as well as two police officers. About 800 soldiers were brought in to shore up security across the capital.
Authorities are searching for three French nationals, including brothers Said Kouachi, born in 1980; Cherif Kouachi, born in 1982; and Hamyd Mourad born in 1996, after suspected Islamist gunmen killed 12 people.
The official, who declined to identify the man, said he had turned himself in at a police station in Charleville-Mézières, in northeastern France at around 2300 GMT.
BFM TV, citing unidentified sources, said the man had decided to go to the police after seeing his name in social media. It said other arrests had taken place in circles linked to the two brothers.
The Associated Press reports that one of the brothers, Cherif Kouachi, "was convicted in 2008 of terrorism charges for helping funnel fighters to Iraq's insurgency, and sentenced to 18 months in prison. During his 2008 trial, he told the court he was motivated by his outrage at television images of torture of Iraqi inmates at the U.S. prison at Abu Ghraib."
Charlie Hebdo drew the ire of Islamic militant groups for regularly publishing cartoons and articles that lampooned jihadists including caricatures of the prophet Muhammad, which many Muslims find offensive. The magazine's offices were firebombed in 2011.
The hooded attackers stormed the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, a weekly known for lampooning Islam and other religions, in the most deadly militant attack on French soil in decades.
Screenshot/Twitter/@Charles_ListerA screengrab of a video showing the attack.
Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said the assailants killed a man at the entrance of the building to force entry. They then headed to the second floor and opened fire on an editorial meeting attended by eight journalists, a policeman tasked with protecting the magazine's editorial director and a guest.
"What we saw was a massacre. Many of the victims had been executed, most of them with wounds to the head and chest," Patrick Hertgen, an emergencies services medic called out to treat the injured, told Reuters.
A Reuters reporter saw groups of armed policeman patrolling around department stores in the shopping district and there was an armed gendarme presence outside the Arc de Triomphe.
"There is a possibility of other attacks and other sites are being secured," police union official Rocco Contento said.
French policeHandout photos released by French Police in Paris of Cherif Kouachi (L), 32, and his brother Said Kouachi, 34.
The Kouachi brothers are from the Paris region while 18-year-old Mourad is from the area of the northeastern city of Reims, the government source told Reuters.
A police source told Reuters that one of them had been identified by his identity card which had been left in the getaway car.
REUTERS/Christian HartmannPolice investigators search for evidence as an unidentified man is detained (top, 2nd R) during an operation in the eastern French city of Reims, January 8, 2015
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