World leaders join huge crowds in Paris anti-terror rally

PARIS — More than 40 world leaders linked arms yesterday, leading hundreds of thousands of French citizens in an unprecedented march under high security to rally for unity and freedom of expression and to honour 17 victims of three days of terrorist attacks.

President Francois Hollande and leaders from Germany, Italy, Israel, Turkey, Britain and the Palestinian territories, among others, moved off from the central Place de la Republique ahead of a sea of French and other flags.

Deafening applause rang out over the square as the leaders walked past, surrounded by tight security and an atmosphere of togetherness amid adversity, after three gunmen attacked a newspaper office, kosher supermarket and the police last week.

Families of the victims, many weeping and embracing, were also at the front of the silent march, which began at the Place de la Republique and finished at the Place de la Nation.

About 2,200 policemen and soldiers patrolled Paris streets to protect marchers from would-be attackers, with plain-clothes detectives mingling with the crowd. In the area around Republique, where the silent march began, snipers could be seen on rooftops, and security officers were seen checking sewers for explosives. Several subway stops and streets were blocked off.

“Today, Paris is the capital of the world,” said French President Francois Hollande in a statement. “Our entire country will rise up towards something better.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi were among 44 foreign leaders marching with Mr Hollande. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu — who earlier encouraged French Jews to emigrate to Israel — and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas were also present.

The aftermath of the attacks remained raw, with video emerging yesterday of the gunman involved in the siege at a Jewish supermarket on Friday that killed four pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group and detailing how he had coordinated his attack with the brothers behind a massacre at satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday.

Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen said it had directed the attack by the brothers to avenge the honour of the Prophet Muhammad, a frequent target of the weekly’s satire. The police had said Coulibaly killed a policewoman on the outskirts of Paris on Thursday.

The attackers were killed by the police on Friday in two separate raids on a Jewish supermarket in Paris and a print shop in Dammartin-en-Goele, north-east of the French capital, where the two others had holed themselves up in. It was France’s deadliest terrorist attack in decades and the country remains on high alert while investigators determine whether the attackers were part of a larger extremist network.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls declared on Saturday that France was at “war” with radical Islam after the harrowing attacks that had claimed the lives of 17 victims. Mr Valls called on the French to take to the streets to show solidarity with the victims and stand behind the idea that republican values of free speech and freedom of expression are the most potent bulwark against terrorists.

“We’re not going to let a little gang of hoodlums run our lives,” said Ms Fanny Appelbaum, 75, who said she lost two sisters and a brother in the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz. “Today, we are all one.” Mr Zakaria Moumni, a 34-year-old Franco-Moroccan draped in the French flag, agreed: “I am here to show the terrorists they have not won — it is bringing people of all religions together.”

At an international conference in India, US Secretary of State John Kerry said the world stood with the people of France “in solidarity and commitment to the cause of confronting extremism and in the cause that extremists fear so much and that has always united our countries: Freedom”.

A 32-year-old jogger who was shot on Wednesday in a Paris suburb was gravely injured and the incident was yesterday linked to the gunman at the supermarket, Amedy Coulibaly.

Five people who were held in connection with the attacks were freed late on Saturday, leaving no one in custody, the Paris prosecutor’s office said. Agencies