The two Charlie Hebdo magazine attack suspects have this afternoon robbed a petrol station while firing shots, according to French media.
The suspects, brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi are subject of a manhunt across France, while the third suspect, 18-year-old Hamyd Mourad, handed himself in overnight.
Mourad is believed to be the brother-in-law of the Kouachi brothers.
AFP have reported that two men fitting the description of Said and Cherif Kouachi stole petrol and food from the station near Villers-Cotterets in the northern Aisne region, 43 miles (70km) away from Paris.
The two suspects are believed to now to be 10 miles away from the petrol station, in Crepy-en-Valois. Police and anti-terror officers have taken to the area and there are helicopters flying overhead.
Prime minister Manuel Valls said the possibility of a new attack “is our main concern” and announced several overnight arrests as the country began a day of national mourning.
The most senior security official abandoned a top-level meeting today after just 10 minutes to rush to a shooting on the city’s southern edge that killed a policewoman.
The shooter remained at large and it was not immediately clear if her death was linked to yesterday’s deadly attack on the Paris newspaper Charlie Hebdo, where two police were among the 12 dead.
Mr Valls said the two suspects still at large in the Charlie Hebdo killings were known to intelligence services and preventing them from carrying out another attack “is our main concern”.
Mr Valls told RTL radio several people had been arrested overnight; a security official put the total at seven. A third suspect in the Charlie Hebdo killings has already turned himself in.
Fears have run high in Europe that jihadis trained in warfare abroad would stage attacks at home. The French suspect in a deadly 2014 attack on a Jewish museum in Belgium had returned from fighting with extremists in Syria; and the man who rampaged in the south of France in 2012, killing three soldiers and four people at a Jewish school in Toulouse, received paramilitary training in Pakistan.
“France has been struck directly in the heart of its capital, in a place where the spirit of liberty – and thus of resistance – breathed freely,” President Francois Hollande said. The attack took place midway between France’s Bastille and the city’s enormous Republique plaza.
At noon local time, the Paris metro came to a standstill and people gathered in homage near Notre Dame Cathedral fell silent to honour Wednesday’s victims.