Elite French security forces tightened the net on two brothers suspected of slaughtering 12 people in an attack after discovering an abandoned getaway car in a north-eastern town.
Helicopters buzzed overhead as police mounted a frantic manhunt for the two fugitives thought to be behind the bloodbath at Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris, the worst terrorist attack in France for half a century.
Earlier they had been identified – reportedly masked and armed – at a petrol station near the town of Villers-Cotterets, 80 kilometres from the French capital, before fleeing again.
An AFP reporter saw 20 heavily armed security force officers surround a nearby house and storm it, keeping journalists away from the scene.
Islamic State, the militant group sowing terror across swathes of Iraq and Syria and calling for global jihad, hailed the brothers as "heroes" on its Al-Bayan radio station.
This was the first reaction by the jihadists to yesterday's massacre in which the fugitive brothers allegedly said they were taking revenge for Charlie Hebdo's repeated publication of cartoons seen by many Muslims as sacrilegious.