French police forces continued Saturday the intense manhunt for the wife of one of the terrorists who was killed after taking hostages the day before at a kosher grocery store in Paris.
Hayat Boumeddiene, who is suspected of being involved in the killing of a policewoman in a Paris suburb on Thursday is also believed to have been an accomplice for her boyfriend, Amedy Coulibaly, who was killed in the police raid at the store Hyper Cacher. Four hostages were killed before authorities gained entry.
Early reports indicated that Boumeddiene was inside the store at the time of the hostage taking, but there is no evidence to support that information.
Boumeddiene married Coulibaly in an Islamic religious ceremony in July 2009 -- a union not recognized by French law. A circular distributed Friday by French police said Boumeddiene should be considered dangerous and potentially armed. The couple reportedly travelled several times to the French countryside to fire crossbows.
It is unclear what, if any, links Boumeddiene has to the store attack, but prosecutors said she has ties to Cherif Kouachi, one of the brothers whose attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine Wednesday left a dozen dead. Cherif and his brother Said, who both died Friday in a separate raid at a printing facility about 25 miles outside Paris, were radicalized and are believed to have ties to Al Qaeda in Yemen.
The Paris prosecutor's office told The New York Times that Boumeddiene had been in "constant and sustained" contact with Cherif’s girlfriend. The report said Cherif and Couibaly were followers of a French-Algerian jihad supporter named Djamel Beghal. He served time in prison for involvement in a plot to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Paris and was released.
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Le Parisien newspaper reported that she lost her job as a cashier because she insisted on wearing a niqab.
French authorities planned to meet Sunday with various security officials to discuss the ongoing terror threat and warned of the possibility of more violence.
"We can't lower our guard," Prime Minister Manuel Valls said.
Sky News reported that Boumeddiene may offer authorities valuable information on a larger extremist cell. Indeed, it appears that the attack's planning may reach far into terror networks.
An Al Qaeda member on Friday provided a statement in English to The Associated Press saying "the leadership of AQAP directed the operations and they have chosen their target carefully."
There was no independent confirmation of the report, and U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials say it is too early to conclude who is responsible for the massacre on Wednesday that left 12 dead.
However, Cherif told a French TV station before Friday's raid at an industrial park that he was sent by Al Qaeda in Yemen and had been financed by the cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed by a U.S. airstrike in Yemen in 2011.
If confirmed, the attack would be the first time Al Qaeda's branch in Yemen has successfully carried out an operation in the West after at least two earlier attempts.
Days of unrest in Paris culminated Friday after two tense, hours-long standoffs, one at a printing plant north of the city and the other at a kosher supermarket on Paris' east side, where four hostages were killed, as many as 15 were freed.
A hostage held north of the city by the brothers was reportedly freed. The fast-moving developments, signaled by explosions and gunfire at a printing plant in Dammartin-en-Goele, followed by similar sounds at a Jewish supermarket in eastern Paris. The police raids left both brothers and Coulibaly dead.
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