Huge crowds flock to Paris anti-terrorism march

More than 40 world leaders have marched through Paris with arms linked for an anti-terrorism rally and to mourn the 17 victims of attacks linked to the assault on the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo.

The leaders joined victims' families to head the demonstration by tens of thousands of people against the assault on Hebdo's office on Wednesday, and follow-up attacks on police and a kosher supermarket in Paris.

Arab leaders including the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and King Abdullah of Jordan took part in the march. The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, also participated.

Both Abbas and Abdullah faced criticism at home for their participation in the march given their records at home.

"Today, Paris is the capital of the world," said the French president, Francois Hollande. "Our entire country will rise up toward something better."

Rallies were also planned in London, Madrid and New York as well as Cairo, Sydney, Stockholm, Tokyo and elsewhere.

"The terrorists want two things: they want to scare us and they want to divide us. We must do the opposite. We must stand up and we must stay united," said the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, on French television on Sunday.

One marcher, Zakaria Moumni, said: "I hope that at the end of the day everyone is united. Everyone, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhists. We are humans first of all. And nobody deserves to be murdered like that. Nobody."

More than 2,000 police were drafted in to protect the march as the government kept the country its highest level of security alert. Many religious and cultural sites were also protected by police.

Three days of fear

The attacks in Paris began last Wednesday when brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi stormed the newsroom of Hebdo, killing 12 people. Al-Qaeda's branch in Yemen claimed the attack to avenge the honour of the Prophet Muhammad, a frequent target of the magazine's satire. On Thursday, police said their accomplice, Amedy Coulibaly, killed a policewoman on the outskirts of Paris.

The Kouachi brothers were tracked down to a print works in the north of the city on Friday, and killed by police as they tried to escape. Coulibaly was killed after four hostages were inside a kosher supermarket he had seized on the same day.

Video footage emerged on Sunday Coulibaly pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group and detailing how the attacks were going to unfold.

Police said they were hunting for Hayat Boumeddiene, a suspected accomplice of Coulibaly. However, a Turkish intelligence official told the AP news agency that a woman by the same name strongly resembling Boumeddiene flew into Istanbul on January 2 and was probably now in Syria.

Boumeddiene, 26, reportedly married Coulibaly in an Islamic ceremony in July 2009, a union not recognised under French law.