Al-Qaeda offshoot threatens France with more attacks

Al-Qaeda in North Africa warned on Monday that France would face more attacks if it persisted in policies “hostile to Islam.”

“France is paying the price for its aggression against Muslims and its hostile policy to Islam,” the al-Qaeda offshoot said in a message posted on Islamist websites, after 17 people were killed in Paris in three attacks by jihadists.

“As long as its soldiers occupy countries like Mali and the Central African Republic and bombard our people in Syria and Iraq, as its stupid press continues to undermine our prophet, France will see the worst,” the group said. It also welcomed “the three horsemen of Islam, heroes of the Battle of Paris,” referring to the perpetrators of the attacks that shook the French capital.

As many as six members of a terrorist cell involved in the Paris attacks may still be at large, including a man who was seen driving a car registered to the widow of one of the gunmen, police officials said Monday.

Two French police officials told The Associated Press that authorities were searching the Paris area for the Mini Cooper registered to Hayat Boumeddiene, the widow of Amedy Coulibaly. Turkish officials say she is now in Syria.

France ordered 10,000 troops into the streets Monday to protect sensitive sites — nearly half of them to guard Jewish schools — as it hunted for accomplices to the Islamic militants who left 17 people dead as they terrorized the nation.

French police have said the Charlie Hebdo attacks, which left 12 dead, were carried out by three people, but only two of those attackers — brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi — have been found.

Survivors say the Charlie Hebdo attackers, two brothers from Paris, claimed they were being supported by al-Qaeda in Yemen, the group the US considers the most dangerous offshoot of that network. In his video and in comments to French media before he died, Coulibaly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, which has taken over large sections of Iraq and Syria.