People watch from their roof-top apartment as some thousands of people gather at Republique square in Paris, France
Thousands of people began a march at Paris’s Place de la Republique, led by world leaders including Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas, to mark France’s worst terror attack in more than half a century.
“Paris is the capital of the world today,” President Francois Hollande said as he received dignitaries from around the world at the Elysee Palace.
Three distinct yet connected terror attacks in the city, including in the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine and a kosher grocery, claimed 17 victims last week. Three attackers were killed, with Prime Minister Manuel Valls saying France was at “war against terrorists, Jihadists, Islamic fundamentalism.”
Thousands of police and soldiers have been deployed for the march, which features 56 world leaders. Among them are Prime Minister David Cameron of the U.K., German Chancellor Angela Merkel, King Abdullah of Jordan, Palestinian President Abbas and Israel’s Netanyahu, along with leaders of Spain, Italy, the European Union, Turkey and Tunisia. The U.S. will be represented by the ambassador to France, Jane Hartley.
“Usually when you have these kind of events with very, very important people, they are planned months in advance,” said Martin Innes, the head of the Police Science Institute at Cardiff University in Wales. “They know that the folks that they’re opposed to would see this as a great target.”
The march starting at Place de la Republique, finishing at the Place de la Nation – less than a mile from the kosher grocery where four hostages perished. It will comprise two routes: one, three kilometers along the Boulevard Voltaire, and a second winding further to the north along the Boulevard de Menilmontant, and along the Avenue Philippe- Auguste. The Interior Ministry declined to specify which route the heads of state would follow.
France will deploy 4,300 police, including 150 in plain clothes to protect the leaders, as well as 1,350 soldiers across Paris for the demonstration, in which the Interior Ministry expects “several hundred thousand” people to take part. Each leader probably will have their own detail as well.
“The fight against terrorism is a global cause,” French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Europe 1 radio yesterday. “There will be representatives of all countries of the world because this is a global cause.”
The European Union plans to tighten borders and improve the exchange of intelligence within the bloc to combat the threat of Islamist terrorism, Cazeneuve said after EU interior ministers meeting in Paris today. They agreed to do more to address the flow of so-called foreign fighters between Europe and Syria and Iraq, including through sharing intelligence to better identify them at the 28-nation EU’s borders.
Briefing reporters after the gathering that included representatives of the U.S. and Canadian government, he said the EU also needed better exchange of information on air passengers within Europe, tighter controls on weapons trafficking and called for more help from Internet companies to counter terrorist propaganda. “We are determined to fight against terrorism together,” Cazeneuve said.
An estimated 700,000 people demonstrated across France on Saturday, including Toulouse, Lyon, Rennes, Nice and Marseille. Rallies were also planned in London, Madrid and New York — all attacked by al-Qaida-linked extremists — as well as Cairo, Sydney, Stockholm, Tokyo and elsewhere.
“We will come out of this stronger,” Hollande said in a televised address on Jan. 9. “We are a free people that won’t give in to pressure, that isn’t afraid.” MDT/Agencies
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