Paris march: Huge crowds rally in honour of terror victims
Huge crowds marched through the streets of Paris yesterday to honour the victims of three days of brutal terror attacks in the French capital.
Hundreds of thousands of French people descended as the country began to come to terms with its biggest terror attack since the Second World War.
The march was led by the friends and family of the 17 people killed in the three-day terror spree and world leaders, including David Cameron, Angela Merkel and Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi.
France had ramped up security measures as thousands of police officers and soldiers patrolled and snipers lined the city's rooftops. Interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said "exceptional measures will be taken to ensure the safety of the march" earlier that day.
Across Europe tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Madrid, Berlin and Brussels in a show of solidarity with France and in condemnation of the violence of the past few days.
This week France's capital Paris was ripped apart by a spate of terror attacks against satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, a kosher supermarket and police.
French-born Brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi massacred 12 people at the offices of Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday. A day later, Amedy Coulibaly killed a french policewoman before killing four hostages at a Kosher supermarket.
The Kouachi brothers and Coulibaly were killed by police in a shoot-out at two locations on Friday. A fourth suspect, Hayat Boumeddiene, the widow of supermarket terrorist Kouabri, is still being hunted by police.
Yesterday's rally showed "the power, the dignity of the French people who will be shouting out of love of freedom and tolerance," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said yesterday.
"Journalists were killed because they defended freedom. Policemen were killed because they were protecting you. Jews were killed because they were Jewish," he said. "I have no doubt that millions of citizens will come to express their love of liberty, their love of fraternity."