The Islamic State militant group praised the gunmen behind this week’s killings at the Paris headquarters of the Charlie Hebdo weekly newspaper as “heroic jihadists”, a monitoring group said yesterday.

The SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors radical Islamist organisations in the media, said Islamic State praised the gunmen in a brief note in its daily audio bulletin, which was distributed on Twitter and jihadi forums on Thursday.

“We start our bulletin with France. Heroic jihadists killed 12 journalists and wounded 10 others working in the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, and that was support for our master [Prophet] Mohammad, may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him,” according to the audio bulletin.

In France, armed and masked anti-terrorism police swooped on woodland villages northeast of Paris in a manhunt for two brothers suspected of carrying out Wednesday’s attack on Charlie Hebdo, a satirical newspaper which had published cartoons of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad as well as other religious and political figures.

Ten journalists and two police officers were killed in the attack, which has raised questions of security in the Western world and beyond.

Many Muslims consider any depiction of the Prophet Mohammad to be against Islam.