Tens of thousands rally across France

FE Team | Published: January 11, 2015 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00

PARIS, Jan 10 (agencies): Tens of thousands of people staged rallies across France on Saturday, authorities said, after three days of terror and twin siege dramas that claimed 17 lives in total.
According to initial police figures, at least 30,000 people took part in a silent rally in southern city of Pau and more than 22,000 gathered in Orleans, southwest of Paris.
France will deploy some 500 extra military personnel in the greater Paris region, the defence ministry said on Saturday, the day after twin sieges sowed fear on the streets of the capital.
"We will this morning announce a reinforcement of 500 additional military personnel, in two waves in Ile de France," said the ministry, referring to Paris and the immediate surrounding areas.
Earlier report adds: French forces killed the two brothers behind the massacre at Charlie Hebdo and an Islamist ally Friday after three blood-soaked days that left 17 other people dead and shook the nation to its core.
Police were still hunting for another suspect, the girlfriend of one of the men, early Saturday, hours after the fiery showdown with the gunmen who had kept France on edge since killing 12 people Wednesday at the offices of the satirical weekly.
The heavily armed brothers were cornered in a small town northeast of Paris while a third man took terrified shoppers hostage in a Jewish supermarket, where four died and seven were hurt including three police officers.
Explosions rang out at sunset at the two hostage sites as police moved in.
As France's bloodiest week in decades drew to a close, the mood began to turn to one of grim national reflection.
President Francois Hollande said he would attend a march of unity in Paris on Sunday expected to draw hundreds of thousands of people as well as the leaders of countries including Germany, Britain, Italy and Spain.
Questions were also mounting over how the three men-brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, and supermarket gunman Amedy Coulibaly-had slipped through the security net after it emerged that all three were known to the intelligence agencies.
Coulibaly's girlfriend Hayat Boumeddiene, who was wanted by police in connection with the killing Thursday of a policewoman, was still on the loose.
With fears spreading in the wake of the attack, the United States warned of a global threat, telling its citizens to beware of "terrorist actions and violence" all over the world.
Hollande, meanwhile, warned the threats facing France "weren't over".
The Kouachi brothers were cornered in a printing business in Dammartin-en-Goele outside Paris Friday after a firefight with police that Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said left Said with a minor neck wound.
The brothers took the manager hostage, later releasing him after he helped Said with his wound, while a second man hid beneath a sink upstairs, said Molins.
The second man was able to text security forces information from inside the premises, a source said, and survived the assault unharmed.
The gunmen had a hefty cache of arms including Molotov cocktails and a loaded rocket-launcher.
One witness described a terrifying face-to-face encounter with one of the suspects, dressed in black, wearing a bullet-proof vest and carrying what looked like a Kalashnikov.
The salesman told France Info radio that one of the brothers said: "'Leave, we don't kill civilians anyhow'."
As French elite forces moved into place around the building, with snipers deployed on roofs and helicopters buzzing overhead, a fresh drama was unfolding in eastern Paris with a hail of gunfire around lunchtime.