10 arrested in Charlie Hebdo, Paris store attacks probe

Ten persons suspected of providing arms for the 2015 attacks on the Charlie Hebdo offices and a supermarket in Paris have been arrested in France and Belgium.

A police operation to detain the suspects began on Monday and continued on Wednesday morning, with 10 suspects in custody so far, a spokesperson for the Paris prosecutor's office said.

The operation was carried out within the framework of an investigation into the weapons used in the attack on January 7, 2015, when brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi shot and killed 12 people at the offices of satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo, Efe news reported.

Two days later, Amedy Coulibaly, a friend of the Kouachi brothers, killed four people at a Kosher supermarket in Paris, before he was shot and killed by security forces.

According to French media reports, those arrested were allegedly involved in the delivery of weapons to Coulibaly.

Investigations into the weapons used in the attacks had already led to Claude Hermant, an ex-mercenary known for his extreme-right links, who was imprisoned and interrogated anew in light of the new findings, French news channel BFMTV reported.

According to the case file, Hermant and his wife bought from a Slovakian company four Tokarev pistols and the two Kalashnikovs that Coulibaly had with him during the supermarket attack.

--IANS

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