France was on its highest alert level Monday, January 12,  as people went back to work and children returned to schools following the Islamist terror attacks that killed 17 people.“The two brothers wanted  in the massacre at the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine, have been killed by security forces in a town where they’d been surrounded,” local mayor said.

About the same time late Friday afternoon, explosions could be heard around where people were being held hostage in a kosher grocery store, stated cnn.com

The Kouachi brothers were killed in an operation by security forces, said Bernard Corneille, the mayor of the nearby village of Othis. French media also reported their deaths, citing police sources. A third suspect, Hamyd Mourad, 18, is cooperating after his surrender in the French town of Charleville-Mezieres, about 140 miles north of Paris, police said.

Cherif, one of the two brothers suspected of killing 12 people in and around the provocative satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, spent several months in Yemen in 2011, receiving weapons training and working with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which is based there, U.S. officials reported Friday, reported the  latimes.com

Yves Albarello, who is in France’s parliament, said on French channel iTele that the two suspects told police by phone that they wanted to die as martyrs.