Crowds are already gathering in Paris' Place de la Republique ahead of this afternoon's march.
French President Francois Hollande has reassured the country's Jewish community that they will be protected in the wake of Coulibaly's attack on the kosher supermarket which left four people dead.
He made the assurance at a meeting with Jewish leaders at the Elysee Palace. One of those who attended said new security measures to protect synagogues and Jewish institutions would be put in place from today.
Text accompanying the video says Coulibaly was behind the deaths of a policewoman and "five Jews", also claiming he had planted a bomb on a car in Paris.
The seven-minute, slickly edited video shows Coulibaly variously doing press-ups, dressed in robes, and displaying an array of automatic weapons and handguns.
Asked whether he has links with the Charlie Hebdo killers, Cherif and Said Kouachi, he says: "The brothers of our team were split into two groups… I went out a bit against the police.
"If we did things a bit together and a bit separately, it was to have more impact."
A video has emerged in which Coulibaly, who also reportedly shot dead a policewoman on Thursday, claims to be acting on behalf of Islamic State (IS). In the video, he pledges his allegiance to Caliph Ibrahim al-Baghdadi, the head of IS, and says he was co-ordinating his attacks with the two brothers who attacked the Charlie Hebdo offices on Wednesday.
Hayat Boumeddiene, the partner of Amedy Coulibaly - who attacked a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris on Friday, killing four hostages and taking hostages before being killed by police - is still wanted by police. She is thought to have fled France last week.
Officials believe she may have entered Turkey en route to Syria.
Meanwhile, French police are still seeking accomplices of the gunmen who attacked satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket.
Eleven people were killed at the magazine offices in Paris on Wednesday, with a policeman shot dead nearby. Four hostages died at the supermarket on Friday.
About 2,000 police officers and 1,350 soldiers are being deployed in Paris to protect more than a million marchers.
We'll be bringing you all the latest news from the French capital, where huge crowds and some 40 world leaders are expected later for a massive unity rally through the city.
Hello and welcome to our coverage of events in Paris, still reeling from three days of terror attacks this week which killed 17 people.
No comments:
Post a Comment