France: Hostage crisis ends, gunman arrested

"The latest Paris hostage crisis ended without bloodshed today after a gunman who claimed he had a Kalashnikov and grenades surrendered to police," The Daily Mail reported.

According to reports, the hostages taken by the gunmen have been freed.

French and German authorities arrested at least 12 people on Friday in connection with suspected links to the Islamic State group.

A Paris train station was also evacuated and the entire Europe is on alert for new potential terrorist attacks, reports said.

Earlier, two suspected terrorists were killed in a gun battle near the German border on Thursday as Belgium stepped up its efforts against subversive modules with police raids, arrests and a heightened alert-level across the country, media reports said.

The authorities said that a man suspected of links to last week’s deadly terror attacks in Paris had been arrested in southern Belgium.

According to reports, the gun battle took place in Verviers - a town located about 75 miles east of Brussels.

The country witnessed a major terrorist attack which even killed several cartoonists after the militants attacked French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo last week.

The Yemen branch of terror outfit Al Qaeda on Wednesday owned responsibility for last week's brutal attack on French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in which 12 people were killed.

Nasr al-Ansi, a top commander of Al Qaeda in Yemen, appeared in an 11-minute internet video, claiming that the attack was carried out in vengeance for the prophet, reports said.

He said Yemen's Al Qaeda branch chose the target, chalked out plans and financed the operation.

Two masked gunmen shot dead journalists and other people in Paris after the newspaper cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

The whole world was shocked following the massacre, first of its kind in France.

The two alleged attackers were later tracked down by police and shot dead in a small industrial town of France.