PARIS — Masked gunmen shouting “Allahu akbar!” stormed the Paris offices of a satirical newspaper Wednesday, killing 12 people, including the paper’s editor, before escaping in a getaway car. It was France’s deadliest terror attack in living memory.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said security forces were hunting for three gunmen after the noon-time attack on the weekly, whose caricatures of the Prophet Muhammed have frequently drawn condemnation from Muslims. Twelve people died and eight were wounded, including four critically, officials said.

French President Francois Hollande called the slayings “a terrorist attack without a doubt” and said several other attacks have been thwarted in France “in recent weeks.”

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Clad all in black with hoods and machine guns and speaking flawless French, the attackers forced one of the cartoonists at the weekly Charlie Hebdo — at the office with her young daughter — to open the door.

The staff was in an editorial meeting and the gunmen headed straight for the paper’s editor, Stephane Charbonnier — widely known by his pen name Charb — killing him and his police bodyguard, said Christophe Crepin, a police union spokesman on the scene. Minutes later, two men strolled out to a black car waiting below, calmly firing on a police officer, with one gunman shooting him in the head as he writhed on the ground.

Ten journalists were killed and two police, Crepin said, one of them assigned as Charb’s bodyguard and another who had arrived on the scene on a mountain bike.

“Hey! We avenged the Prophet Muhammed! We killed Charlie Hebdo,” one of the men shouted, according to a video filmed from a nearby building and broadcast on French television. Other video images showed two gunmen in black at a crossroads who appeared to fire down one of the streets. A cry of “Allahu akbar!” — Arabic for “God is great”— could be heard among the gunshots.