Paris: Huge Crowd Marches To Defy Terrorists

Around a million people are marching through Paris in a show of defiance and unity in the wake of three days of terror that left 17 people dead.
The French capital is on high alert as the crowd makes its way from the historic Place de la Republique to Place de la Nation.

The families of those who died in the shootings are at the front of the march, which includes heads of state, who linked hands as they led the huge crowd on the 1.9 mile route.

Among those at the head of the crowd were French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron.

Before they set off, a minute of silence was observed for those who died in the attacks.

Many of those marching are carrying the French national flag and tributes to the victims of the attacks on a satirical magazine, a Jewish supermarket and police.

Occasional bursts of applause and chants of "Charlie! Charlie!" in memory of the journalists gunned down at Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday could be heard from the crowds.

Small groups sang the La Marseillaise, the French national anthem.

Giant letters attached to a statue in the Place de la Republique spelt out the word "Pourquoi?" (Why?).

Some of the marchers were in tears as they gathered on a cold but bright day.

More than 5,500 police and military personnel have been deployed, including 2,200 who are guarding the route of the march.

Some 2,000 police officers and 1,350 soldiers are stationed at other locations around the city, including at places of worship, media outlets and public buildings.

A total of 150 plain clothes detectives will mingle among the crowd and a security perimeter will be enforced, with roads and some metro stations closed.

Nearly 10,000 people took to the streets of Dammartin-en-Goele, the small town where the manhunt for the brothers behind the Charlie Hebdo attack came to a bloody end.

Early estimates suggest at least 150,000 people are marching outside of Paris.

In Saint-Etienne in the southeast, some 60,000 people, more than a third of the population, joined a march from the railway station to the town hall.

The scenes were repeated everywhere from Perpignan in the Pyrenees of the south to Blois in the Loire valley.

Ahead of the Paris rally, French President Francois Hollande said: "Today, Paris is the capital of the world.

"Our entire country will rise up toward something better."

Brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, who were behind the attack on Charlie Hebdo, and their associate Amedy Coulibaly, who shot a policewoman and then killed four people at the kosher supermarket, were shot dead by police on Friday.

Authorities are hunting Coulibaly's "armed and dangerous" partner Hayat Boumeddiene - but may have their work cut out after it emerged she left for Turkey on 2 January and may have travelled to Syria.