Wednesday’s Charlie Hebdo rampage and Thursday’s brutal shooting attack in Paris are connected, the French Interior Ministry stated Friday – but refused to provide details. 

Twelve people were killed in Wednesday’s jihadist attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo – five cartoonists, three contributors, a guest at the magazine’s editorial conference and a maintenance worker, along with two police officers.

On Thursday, a lone gunman shot a policewoman dead along with a second victim – who is hospitalized in serious condition – in the southern Parisian suburb of Montrouge. 

Two arrests have been made in the Montrouge case, a police source told AFP – and one of them was a member of the same jihadist group as the Kouachi brothers, the current suspects holding hostages in Dammartin-en-Goele in an hours-long standoff. 

Both brothers have told their victims, including cartoonist Corrinne Rey and owners of cars they hijacked that they represented Al-Qaeda, and were confirmed by police and US intelligence to have been involved in Al Qaeda activities in Yemen and Iraq.