A manhunt continued on Thursday over a wide area of northern France for the two chief suspects in the Paris newspaper attack, as the country mourned the 12 victims.
Follow updates on the latest developments from New York Times reporters below. Catch up on Wednesday’s developments.
5:47 P.M. Suspect Trained in Yemen, U.S. Official Says
Our colleagues Eric Schmitt and Michael Schmidt report from Washington:
One of the two brothers suspected of killing 12 people at a satirical newspaper in Paris traveled to Yemen in 2011 and received terrorist training from Al Qaeda’s affiliate there before returning to France, a senior American official said on Thursday.
The suspect, Saïd Kouachi, 34, spent “a few months” training in small arms combat, marksmanship and other skills that appeared to be on display in videos of the military-style attack on Wednesday carried out by at least two gunmen on the offices of the Charlie Hebdo newspaper.
Mr. Kouachi’s training came at a time when many other young Muslim men in the West were inspired by Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born cleric who by 2011 had become a senior operational figure for the terrorist group, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
A United States intelligence official said on Thursday that both brothers were in the United States database of known or suspected terrorists, and were on an American no-fly list for years.
5:39 P.M. Houellebecq Stops Promoting New Novel on Islam
Michel Houellebecq, the provocative French novelist who appeared, in cartoon form, on the cover of the latest issue of Charlie Hebdo, has suspended a promotional tour for his new book, “Submission,” which paints a nightmare vision of France in the year 2022 after the election of its first Muslim president.
The novelist was “deeply affected by the death of his friend Bernard Maris,” a writer killed in the attack, his agent told Jean-François Guyot of Agence France-Presse.
Mr. Maris wrote the Charlie Hebdo cover story on Mr. Houellebecq, who was accused of being a “fifth columnist” for France’s anti-immigrant far right by a writer for the left-wing daily newspaper Libération on Thursday.
— ROBERT MACKEY
4:26 P.M. Guardian Donates $150,000 to Charlie Hebdo
Speaking on Thursday at a live event in London, “We are Charlie,” the editor of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, said that the British media group had donated 100,000 pounds, just over $150,000, to Charlie Hebdo to help keep the satirical French weekly newspaper going in the aftermath of the deadly attack on Wednesday.
— ROBERT MACKEY
3:38 P.M. Video of Suspect as Young Rapper From 2005 TV Report
As my colleagues Andrew Higgins and Maïa de la Baume report, Chérif Kouachi — who is suspected of carrying out the deadly attack in Paris on Wednesday with his brother Saïd — was arrested and jailed in 2005 on terrorism charges, as he was preparing to go to join Islamist insurgents in Iraq.
After that arrest, video of Mr. Kouachi recorded in 2004, when he was an aspiring rapper, was broadcast on French television in an investigative report on the appeal of jihad to disaffected members of France’s Algerian community. (The Kouachi brothers were the orphaned children of Algerian immigrants, according to Libération, the French daily.)
Paris Terror Suspect Shown in 2005 Film
Chérif Kouachi, one of the suspects in the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris, appeared in a 2005 investigative documentary about jihadism that aired on French television.
Video by France3, via INA on Publish Date January 8, 2015. Photo by Pièces à Conviction, France3.According to the report, Mr. Kouachi was radicalized by Farid Benyettou, a young preacher who was also arrested in 2005 and convicted of recruiting young men, including Mr. Kouachi, to fight as jihadists in Iraq.
Although Mr. Kouachi was convicted in 2008 — along with Mr. Benyettou and a number of young men known as the “19th arrondissement cell” for the working-class Paris neighborhood where most of the suspects grew up — he did not go to prison because of time spent in pretrial detention.
During the trial, Bloomberg News reported in 2008, Mr. Kouachi said that he had been driven to take up arms by images of the torture and humiliation of Muslims at the hands of American soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Prosecutors said Mr. Kouachi had wanted to attack Jewish targets in France but had been dissuaded by Mr. Benyettou, who encouraged him to go to Iraq instead. In court in 2008, Mr. Kouachi, who smoked marijuana when not studying Islam, had insisted that his main interest was hip-hop, not jihad.
— ROBERT MACKEY
2:30 P.M. Eiffel Tower Goes Dark
A day after the deadly attacks in Paris at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, the memorials continued for the 12 people killed there.
Lights of the #EiffelTower in #Paris dimmed in honor of #CharlieHebdo terror attack victims pic.twitter.com/PlBHyaAtJ4
— Sanam (@SanamLou) January 8, 2015
— THE NEW YORK TIMES
2:12 P.M. National Front Leader on Death Penalty Referendum
Marine Le Pen, leader of the far right National Front, called for a national referendum on whether to re-institute the death penalty. “The Islamists have declared war against France,” she told France 2, part of a national public television network.
Ms. Le Pen said that she has not yet been invited to a “unity rally” scheduled for Sunday to which other political leaders have been invited. “Things are clear from now on, the masks fall off,” she told Le Monde. “National unity is a pathetic political maneuver.”
1:28 P.M. 90 Witnesses Questioned on Attack
The French authorities said more than 90 witnesses had been questioned and nine people taken into custody, up from seven, in connection with the attack on Charlie Hebdo.
1:00 P.M. Holder to Attend Talks in Paris on Sunday
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is planning to travel to Paris on Sunday following the attack on Charlie Hebdo, a New York Times correspondent, Matt Apuzzo, reported on Twitter.
12:51 P.M. French Daily Offers Office Space to Charlie Hebdo
Charlie Hebdo has accepted an invitation to use office space at the French newspaper Libération starting Friday morning, Le Figaro reported.
“We will provide them a whole level of our building and all the means necessary to produce their edition next week, and future editions, as long as they need them,” Libération said in a statement.
The satirical weekly was planning to put out an edition on its usual schedule next Wednesday.
Libération also hosted Hebdo after its office was bombed in 2011.
12:51 P.M. Backlash Against Paper Spurs ‘I Am Not Charlie’ Tweets
The outpouring of sympathy for the victims of Wednesday’s deadly attack on the Paris headquarters of Charlie Hebdo, the satirical French weekly where cartoons offending believers of all faiths were printed with glee, has been widespread but not universal on social networks.
After messages of solidarity using the slogan #JeSuisCharlie, or “I am Charlie,” spread online and on the streets Wednesday — and publications around the world reprinted the newspaper’s cartoons mocking Islam and other religions, arguing that doing so was a necessary defense of free speech — some dissenters began to question the logic.
A blogger from Northern Ireland who writes as Nine suggested that it was possible to be outraged by the killings but still say “I am not Charlie” in response to the offensive nature of the publication’s cartoons.
Writing on Twitter, Yousef Munayyer, the former director of the Palestine Center in Washington, argued that the killings were abhorrent but that the newspaper’s cartoons were, in his view, racist nonetheless and should not be celebrated.
The notion that Charlie Hebdo cartoons intended to skewer racism and intolerance at times themselves crossed the line was vigorously rejected by the French justice minister, Christiane Taubira, a black woman who was once portrayed as a monkey in the publication, as it commented on similar far-right attacks on her. After the attack on Wednesday, Ms. Taubira called a free press “the enemy of obscurantism and violence,” and said it was inconceivable that the publication should cease to publish.
Siddhartha Mitter, an American journalist who grew up in France, and Ali Abunimah, the Palestinian-American founder of the Electronic Intifada, were among those suggesting that Charlie Hebdo had transformed from radical left-wing publication in the 1970s into a journal with more reactionary politics in recent years.
Dyab Abou Jahjah, a Lebanese-born activist living in Belgium, suggested that it would be more appropriate to say “Je Suis Ahmed,” to pay tribute to Ahmed Merabet, the wounded police officer who was gunned down by the militants on a sidewalk outside the newspaper on Wednesday.
The killing of the officer, and an exchange of words between him and a gunman, was captured on video by a witness, shared online and later reproduced on the front page on The Times of London.
That Mr. Merabet was, according to the French daily Le Figaro, a French Muslim complicated the narrative of a war of civilizations embraced by extremists in Europe and the Middle East, as Mr. Abou Jahjah and the American writer Adam Shatz pointed out.
Mr. Abou Jahjah, who leads a citizens movement and writes a column for the Belgian daily De Standaard, agreed with this sentiment in a comment posted on Facebook on Wednesday:
I certainly understand why so many Europeans are afraid of extreme Islamists. And they are right to be afraid. But do they understand that the absolute majority of Muslims is also afraid of extreme Islamists? Do they also realize that the absolute majority of Muslims are afraid of right-extremism abusing their fear to stigmatize all Muslims in their eyes? I hope we will not end up in a situation where we all will feel that we need to hide from each other behind the broad shoulders and the clenched fists of our own extremists. At that moment we are all doomed. The answer is to fight all extremism together. And to fight it hard! Because at the essence, it is all the same.
— ROBERT MACKEY
12:05 P.M. Thousands Mobilized in Manhunt, France Says
France’s interior ministry said more than 88,000 people, including police and military personnel, were involved in one way or another in the manhunt for the two brothers suspected of mounting the attack on Charlie Hebdo.
11:45 A.M. Cartoonists Respond to the Attack
Our colleague Christopher D. Shea has compiled on the ArtsBeat blog some of the drawings that cartoonists around the world have shared on social media in the wake of the attack.
11:44 A.M. Question Looms for Unity Rally: Can Far Right Attend?
Disagreement has erupted over whether France’s National Front, a far-right nationalist party, should be invited to a unity rally in Paris on Sunday.
The leaders of the major French political parties, including President François Hollande’s Socialist Party, have all signed on for the rally, but seemed to exclude the group.
“Nobody invited the National Front,” the party’s leader, Marine Le Pen, told Le Monde. “Things are clear from now on, the masks fall off. National unity is a pathetic political maneuver.”
“National unity isn’t some sort of blackmail, where you can only come if you shut your mouth,” she said. “I’m not submitting to blackmail.”
Florian Philippot, a vice president of the National Front, was quoted as saying that any desire to exclude the party would be “a political and moral mistake.”
The attack against Charlie Hebdo seemed sure to propel the growth of anti-Islamic attitudes in Europe, where anti-immigrant attitudes have been on the rise, lifting the fortunes of far-right parties like National Front.
Julien Dray, a prominent Socialist, said the party had no place in the rally.
10:50 A.M. Terror Alert Extended to Picardy Region
France’s highest level terror alert was extended on Thursday to Picardy, a region north of greater Paris, news outlets reported, amid a growing manhunt for two suspects in the Charlie Hebdo attack.
On Wednesday, the terror alert had been raised in the Ile-de-France region, one of 22 in France, which includes Paris.
10:16 A.M. Border Security Is Tightened in Britain
Britain said on Thursday that it would increase security at ports of entry after the Paris attacks, but that it was not raising the terrorism alert level, which remains “severe,” an indication that it does not think an attack is highly likely.
The announcement, made by the office of Prime Minister David Cameron, followed a meeting of senior politicians and intelligence chiefs on Thursday.
As a precaution, there will be a more visible security presence at points of entry in Britain and France, including at the Gare du Nord rail station in Paris, where British officials check the travel documents of passengers going to Britain.
— STEPHEN CASTLE
9:56 A.M. Eiffel Tower to Go Dark in Honor of Victims
The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, called for “defenders of liberty” to gather again at 6 p.m. at the Place de la République, and said the Eiffel Tower would go dark at 8 p.m. in remembrance of the victims.
“Like us, it is grieving,” Ms. Hidalgo said of the landmark.
An estimated 35,000 people gathered Wednesday evening, some holding signs reading “I am Charlie.”
9:36 A.M. Map: Attacks on French Mosques
Agence France-Presse created a map of attacks on mosques that were reported after the events in Paris on Wednesday.
It was unclear whether they had any connection to the assault on Charlie Hebdo.
9:28 A.M. Suspect’s Former Lawyer Urges Him to Surrender
Speaking to the French radio station Europe 1, Vincent Ollivier, a former lawyer for one of the suspects, Chérif Kouachi, urged him to turn himself in.
“If Mr. Kouachi can hear me,” Mr. Ollivier said, “I would advise what any lawyer would advise: that he surrender to the authorities so that, if he’s innocent of the acts he’s suspected of, light can be shed.”
Mr. Kouachi, the younger of the two brothers suspected in the attack, had been arrested in 2005 and tried three years later on terrorism charges.
During the trial, Mr. Ollivier, the lawyer, described his client as a confused “occasional Muslim” who liked to smoke marijuana and listen to rap music.
Correction: An earlier version of this post misspelled, in one instance, the surname of Mr. Kouachi’s former lawyer. He is Vincent Ollivier, not Olivier.
— HANNAH OLIVENNES
9:15 A.M. Pope Laments ‘Human Cruelty’ of Attack
Pope Francis celebrated a Mass on Thursday in memory of the victims of the attack, and lamented the human potential for cruelty, The Associated Press reported.
The pope has urged different faiths to work together to battle “fanaticism and fundamentalism.”
Saying Mass at the Vatican, he asked for prayers for the victims, The A.P. reported, as well as for the gunmen who stormed the offices of the satirical weekly.
‘‘The attack yesterday in Paris makes us think about so much cruelty — human cruelty,” he said.
The pope also expressed his sympathy with a brief message on Twitter.
9:02 A.M. Police Move Into Town North of Paris, Local Media Say
Local news media on Thursday afternoon reported a heavy presence of French law enforcement officers in the town of Crépy-en-Valois, about 35 miles north of Paris. It was unclear whether the suspects were believed to be hiding there.
Helicopters were seen circling overhead.
Xavier Castaing, a spokesman for the Paris police, said that men resembling the two suspects had been spotted in the Aisne region, northeast of Paris.
8:29 A.M. The ID Card of Said Kouachi, One of the Suspects
8:20 A.M. France Observes a Minute of Silence
While two of the chief suspects in Wednesday’s attack were still at large, people across France observed a moment of silence at noon to honor the victims.
A crowd gathered outside the site of the attack.
Representatives of several faiths gathered outside the Grand Mosque in Paris.
Inside the Elysée, the presidential palace, staff members assembled.
In front of Notre Dame Cathedral, mourners honored the cartoonists by holding pens and pencils.
Employees of Agence France-Presse gathered along the side of their office building in Paris.
Subways, commuter trains and buses in Paris were halted. An electronic display warned passengers of the planned stoppage.
8:15 A.M. Live Coverage From France24
The English-language version of the news channel France24 is live streaming their coverage of the shootings on Wednesday at the offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris.
8:07 A.M. Muslim Council of Britain Condemns Attacks
In a statement, the Muslim Council of Britain reiterated its condemnation of the killing of journalists at the French newspaper Charlie Hebdo.
“Nothing justifies the taking of life,” Shuja Shafi, the secretary general of the council, the most prominent representative body for Britain’s Muslims, said in the statement. “Those who have killed in the name of our religion claim to be avenging the insults made against” the Prophet Muhammad, he said, “but nothing is more immoral, offensive and insulting against our beloved prophet than such a callous act of murder.”
“In the coming weeks, Muslims will face the test of having to justify themselves and their place in Western society,” Mr. Shafi continued. “While Muslims must engage with fellow citizens in a spirit of dialogue and friendship, we must all come together to seek unity and defy the terrorists whose only aim is to divide us. The best defense against closed minds is for a truly open society, welcoming of all.”
— ALAN COWELL
8:05 A.M. Charlie Hebdo Will Publish Next Week
The satirical weekly newspaper that was the target of Wednesday’s attack will be published on its usual schedule next week, a lawyer for the paper told Agence France-Presse.
“The Charlie Hebdo newspaper will come out next Wednesday,” the lawyer, Richard Malka, said.
Mr. Malka said that one million copies would be printed, far more than the normal press run of under 100,000 copies.
Patrick Pelloux, a columnist for the paper, said that the staff would meet soon.
“It’s very hard,” he told Agence France-Presse. “We are all suffering, with grief, with fear, but we will do it anyway, because stupidity will not win.”
The issue will be only eight pages, rather than the usual 16, Mr. Malka said. He also told the agency that the paper had received aid from the cable television company Canal + and the daily newspaper Le Monde, and that the left-leaning daily Libération would provide office space for the remaining staffers to work in.
“We won’t stop,” Mr. Pelloux told the French state radio station France International on Thursday morning. “We have to put together an even better paper, I don’t know how. But we’ll do it. We’ll write it with our tears, but we’ll write it. We don’t have the right to give in.”
7:55 A.M. French Police Urge Restraint on Spreading Rumors
After a picture of a gas station where the suspects were said to have been seen started spreading on Twitter, France’s national police force took to social media to ask people not to disturb the work of investigators by spreading false information or rumors:
They also asked that people retweet only information from the authorities, specifically their own Twitter account, and those of the Interior Ministry and of police headquarters:
In a third tweet, they were insistent: “Do not contribute to spreading malicious photos/videos/accounts. Do not SHARE them. Do not LIKE them. Do not RT them.”
— HANNAH OLIVENNES