"There are at least two dead, maybe more, but for the moment we don't know," one source said.French officials suspect a man responsible for the murder of a policewoman in the street of a southern Paris suburb on Thursday could be the hostage-taker.
The suspect killed a policewoman in Montrouge, southern Paris, on Thursday. He is suspected to be a member of the same terrorist group as brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, who stormed satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo a day earlier, killing 12 people.
Meanwhile French police released mugshots of a man and woman suspected in killing of a the policewoman.They were named as Amedy Coulibaly, 32, and Hayat Boumeddiene, 26, and are considered "armed and dangerous".
The man holding hostages in a kosher grocery on Friday knew at least one of the suspects in the Charlie Hebdo massacre, a source told AFP. Amedy Coulibaly, 32, was seen with Charlie Hebdo suspect Cherif Kouachi in 2010 during an investigation into an attempted prison break in France.
Coulibaly was convicted for his role and was well-known to anti-terrorist police.