French Terror Suspect's Wife Crossed Into Syria From Turkey - Turkish Foreign Minister

The spouse of one of the suspected Paris attackers had crossed into Syria from Turkey the day before her husband held hostages at a Jewish supermarket in the French capital last week, Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Monday.

French police suspect Boumediene served as a link between Coulibaly and the brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi suspected of killing 12 people at the headquarters of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. 

Turkey's Anadolu news agency quoted Cavusoglu as saying that Hayat Boumediene, the common-law wife of Amedy Coulibaly who killed four hostages at a kosher food supermarket in Paris on 9 January, arrived in Istanbul from Madrid on 2 January, stayed at a hotel in Istanbul and then went to Syria on 8 January.

"As soon as we got the intelligence about Hayat Boumediene, we conveyed it to French officials," Cavusoglu told the news agency.

His remarks marked the first public statement from Ankara on Boumediene's suspected whereabouts.

According to French media reports released last week, Boumediene was most likely in Turkey before the deadly attacks in Paris that claimed the lives of 17 people ? 12 killed at Charlie Hebdo by the Kouachi brothers on 7 January, a policewoman shot in the southern Paris suburb of Montrouge by Coulibaly on 8 January and the four hostages killed in the Jewish supermarket on 9 January.

French security forces in France on Monday were hunting for a "probable accomplice" to the suspected terrorists and Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the search was urgent because "the threat is still present."