The Place de la Republique, a square in Paris, was lit up in the colors of the French flag on Sunday night (January 10) to commemorate victims of Islamist militant attacks last year.
Hundreds of people, including Parisians and sympathizers from around France and other countries trooped to the square for the event.
It capped a week of commemoration events, one year after two brothers shot editorial staff members of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
France honored the victims in a silent but thinly attended ceremony in the square earlier on Sunday, a year to the day after more than a million people marched through Paris to protest the killings.
The huge square in eastern Paris was the focal point of the January 11th march last year, attended by dozens of world leaders walking arm in arm.
A monument topped by the statue of Marianne, a symbol of the French republic, has become a shrine to the 17 victims of the January 2015 attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish deli and the 130 victims of the November shootings.
“The Parisians, the people who love Paris, all who want to gather together- are finding themselves in this square. So its status has become very powerful. It has indeed become a square that symbolizes brotherhood,” Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo said.
French President Francois Hollande and Hidalgo laid a remembrance plaque in Place de la Republique in a ceremony on Sunday morning.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said security forces remain on high alert as there is a real threat of more attacks. (Reuters)
