France pays tribute to terror victims

France honored the victims of Islamist militant attacks last year in a thinly attended silent ceremony on Sunday, almost a year to the day when more than a million people marched in Paris to protest killings at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

President François Hollande and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo laid a wreath by the statue of Marianne, symbol of the French republic, in central Paris. The statue has become a shrine to the 17 victims of the January 2015 attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish deli, and to the 130 people shot dead by militants on November 13 at a concert, and in bars and restaurants in Paris.

“To the victims of the terrorist attacks in January and November ... In this place, the people of France pay their respect,” read a metal plaque unveiled by Hollande and Hidalgo under a newly planted memorial oak tree on Place de la Republique in eastern Paris.