Policewoman shot by gunman near Paris dies

Police officers, rescue workers and firefighters gather on the site of a shooting in Montrouge, south of Paris, on Thursday. It was unclear if the shootout was connected to the terrorist attack at the Charlie Hebdo headquarters on Wednesday.

AFP/Paris

A policewoman who was shot by a gunman wearing a bullet-proof vest just outside Paris has died and a second victim is in serious condition, police said on Thursday.

The man escaped after the attack on Thursday morning, which comes just a day after a deadly Islamist assault on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo left 12 dead, although no link has yet been established between the two incidents.

Meanwhile, Muslim places of worship in two French towns were fired upon overnight, leaving no casualties, prosecutors said on Thursday.

Three blank grenades were thrown at a mosque shortly after midnight in the city of Le Mans, west of Paris. A bullet hole was also found in a window of the mosque.

In the Port-la-Nouvelle district near Narbonne in southern France, several shots were fired in the direction of a Muslim prayer hall shortly after evening prayers. The hall was empty, the local prosecutor said.

An explosion at a kebab shop near a mosque in the eastern French town of Villefranche-sur-Saone on Thursday morning also left no casualties. Local prosecutors have described it as a "criminal act".

Seven detained in hunt for killers

Seven people have been detained in the hunt for brothers suspected of gunning down 12 people in the assault on the satirical weekly, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said on Thursday.

The masked, black-clad gunmen burst into the offices of the Charlie Hebdo magazine on Wednesday morning, killing some of France's most outspoken journalists and two policemen, before jumping into a car and escaping.

They are still on the run, and authorities have warned they are "armed and dangerous."

"Seven people," Cazeneuve said on French radio when asked how many people were currently being held and questioned over the attack - the bloodiest in France in half a century.

A judicial source, who refused to be named, added that those who were being questioned are men and women who are close to the suspects, without saying where they had been detained.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls meanwhile told RTL radio that the two suspects were known to intelligence services and were "no doubt" being followed before Wednesday's attack.

They have been identified as Cherif Kouachi, 32, a known jihadist convicted in 2008 for involvement in a network sending fighters to Iraq, and his 34-year-old brother Said. Both were born in Paris.

The massacre triggered an outpouring of solidarity around the world, with outraged people from Moscow to Washington rallying in their tens of thousands under the banner "I am Charlie", in support of press freedom and the controversial Charlie Hebdo magazine.