Paris is on heightened alert since as many as six members of a terrorist cell involved in last week's terrorist attacks might still be at large, police officials said on Monday.
An unidentified man was reportedly spotted driving a Mini Cooper registered to the widow of one of the slain gunmen, the Associated Press reported. Hayat Boumedienne has been identified as the common-law wife and suspected accomplice of Amédy Coulibaly, a militant Islamist who opened fire inside a kosher supermarket in Paris on Friday, killing 4 people before dying in a gun battle with police authorities.
French police authorities are currently searching for the car in the Paris area, two French officials told the AP, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss details of the investigation with the news media.
Although a massive international manhunt has been underway to locate Boumedienne, the 26-year-old suspect reportedly crossed into Syria on Jan. 8, the same day her 32-year-old husband fatally shot a policewoman on the outskirts of Paris and a day after Al Qaeda-linked terrorist brothers, Said and Chérif Kouachi, methodically executed 12 people in an attack on the Paris headquarters of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, French authorities said, adding that both attacks were believed to be coordinated.
Before Boumedienne made her way into Syria, she allegedly stayed at a hotel in Istanbul with another person. Her last phone signal was also on Jan. 8, from the Turkish border town of Akcakale, Sky News reported.
The current search has been described as urgent because "the threat is still present," Prime Minister of France Manuel Valls said.
Following the attacks that killed 17 people last week, France deployed 10,000 troops to protect sensitive sites including Jewish schools and neighborhoods on Monday.
The nationwide deployment of troops would be completed by Tuesday and would focus on the most sensitive locations, Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said.
"The work on these attacks, on these terrorist and barbaric acts continues ... because we consider that there are most probably some possible accomplices," Valls told BFM television.
Meanwhile, police are also searching for a person responsible for filming and posting a video of one of the attackers explaining how the massacre would unfold in Paris.
