World leaders join mass march to honor Paris attack victims

Europe, News January 11, 2015 , by IRIA No Comments

Following days of deadly attacks, hundreds of thousands of anti-terrorism protesters have gathered for a rally in the French capital, Paris, with world leaders and officials also attending the event to honor attack victims.

Dignitaries and world leaders joined hundreds of thousands of people in Paris on Sunday in what government officials called a “unity rally” in defiance of a terrorism rampage that claimed 17 lives.

The march was led by the historic sight of French President Francois Hollande linked arm-in-arm with Germany’s Angela Merkel, Britain’s David Cameron, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and other world leaders in a show of solidarity against terror.

French President Francois Hollande (3rd L) is surrounded by head of states (From L to R : Benyamin Netanyahu of Israel, Ibrahim Boubakar Keita of Mali, Angela Merkel of Germany, EU Coucil President Donald Tusk and Palestinian Mahmud Abbas) as they attend the solidarity march (Marche Republicaine) in the streets of Paris Jan. 11.

The crowds spilled over the official planned march route, making a precise count of demonstrators impossible, according to the French Interior Ministry. But early on, the Ministry, which called the rally “unprecedented,” estimated that at least 1.2 million people attended, making the gathering the largest in France’s history. Another 2.5 million people marched simultaneously in other parts of the country.

Some 2,200 police and soldiers patrolled Paris streets to protect marchers from would-be attackers, with police snipers on rooftops and plain-clothes detectives mingling with the crowd. City sewers were searched ahead of the vigil and underground train stations around the march route are due to be closed down.

The silent march — which may prove the largest seen in modern times through Paris — reflected shock over the worst militant Islamist assault on a European city in nine years. For France, it raised questions of free speech, religion and security, and beyond French frontiers it exposed the vulnerability of states to urban attacks.

“Paris is today the capital of the world. Our entire country will rise up and show its best side,” said Hollande in a statement.

The rally is taking place near the office of satirical newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, where two gunmen killed 12 people on January 7.

Two days later, two brothers, Said and Cherif Kouachi, suspected of murdering the journalists, were killed after being cornered at a printing workshop in the town of Dammartin-en-Goele.

On the same day, police ended a second and related hostage-taking at a Kosher supermarket in the eastern Porte de Vincennes area of Paris, killing one armed hostage-taker, Amedy Coulibaly, who was also a suspect in the killing of a policewoman in southern Paris a day earlier.