Police said Coulibaly is also suspected of killing a Paris police officer on Thursday in the Montrouge area of the southern Parisian suburbs. At least four hostages were killed at the Kosher market, the Associated Press reported.

Police told the Associated Press that Coulibaly appeared to know Said Kouachi and Cherif Kouachi, the brothers who were named as suspects in the Wednesday attack on the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, which left 12 people dead. Coulibaly threatened to kill his hostages if French authorities went after the two brothers, who were also holding a hostage in a printing plant northeast of Paris, the Associated Press reported.

The three men were all members of the same Paris jihadist cell that sent French fighters to Iraq a decade ago, a police source told Reuters. According to France's L'Obs, Coulibaly spent time with Cherif Kouachi when they were both in prison in Fleury-Mérogis between 2005 and 2006.

Smain Ali Belkacem from jail, Reuters reported. The BBC noted that the two Kouachi brothers were also named in connection to the attack, but not charged because of lack of evidence.

Police also named a second suspect, a woman named Hayet Boumddiene, 26, as the gunman's accomplice in Thursday’s police shooting. Her whereabouts on Friday were unclear. Le Monde reports that Boumddiene is Coulibaly’s partner.

Little is known about Coulibaly’s profile. Le Monde reported that in an interview for a 2009 for a Le Parisien article, Coulibaly spoke of being excited to meet former French President Nicholas Sarkozy. At the time, he was working at a Coca-Cola factory in Grigny, on the southern outskirts of Paris. “I didn't know what I was going to say. So I began with hello,”