PARIS: Two brothers suspected of having gunned down 12 people in an Islamist attack on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo were spotted Thursday morning and are armed, sources close to the manhunt said.

The manager of a petrol station near Villers-Cotteret in the northern Aisne region “recognised the two men suspected of having participated in the attack against Charlie Hebdo”, the source said.

French Police, earlier on Thursday, identified three men, including two brothers, as suspects in the attack at the offices of weekly satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, as security officers fanned out around the Paris region in a manhunt.

One police official said the men had links to a Yemeni terrorist network. Witnesses of the attackers' escape through Paris said one claimed allegiance to al Qaeda in Yemen.

Also read: 12 dead in shooting at Paris offices of satirical magazine

Two police officials named the three suspects as Frenchmen Said Kouachi and Cherif Kouachi, who are brothers and in their early 30s, as well as 18-year-old Hamyd Mourad, whose nationality wasn't immediately clear.