PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron led a somber tribute on Sunday to the 17 victims of attacks in Paris three years ago that marked the first of a wave of deadly extremist assaults in France.
During a three-day killing spree in January 2015, gunmen killed reporters and illustrators at satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, police officers and shoppers at a Jewish supermarket.
Sunday’s commemoration started at the former premises of Charlie Hebdo, where two brothers armed with assault rifles shot and killed 11, including most of the notoriously irreverent publication’s cartoonists and writers.
The names of the victims were read out before wreaths were laid in front of the office building, including one by Macron and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo.
Homage was then paid at the nearby site where a policeman was shot dead at point-blank range by one of the gunmen.
A similar tribute was later held at the kosher store where a third gunman killed four people.
The Charlie Hebdo attack was carried out by brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, who died in a police assault two days later.
The perpetrator of the attack on the Jewish store, Amedy Coulibaly, also shot dead a policewoman in a separate incident. Coulibaly was also killed by police.
France remembers Charlie Hebdo victims three years after attacks
France remembers Charlie Hebdo victims three years after attacks
Bomb attacks on Thailand petrol stations injure 4: army
- Authorities did not announce any arrests or say who may be behind the attacks
BANGKOK: Assailants detonated bombs at nearly a dozen petrol stations in Thailand’s south early Sunday, injuring four people, the army said, the latest attacks in the insurgency-hit region.
A low-level conflict since 2004 has killed thousands of people as rebels in the Muslim-majority region bordering Malaysia battle for greater autonomy.
Several bombs exploded within a 40-minute period after midnight on Sunday, igniting 11 petrol stations across Thailand’s southernmost provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala, an army statement said.
Authorities did not announce any arrests or say who may be behind the attacks.
“It happened almost at the same time. A group of an unknown number of men came and detonated bombs which damaged fuel pumps,” Narathiwat Governor Boonchauy Homyamyen told local media, adding that one police officer was injured in the province.
A firefighter and two petrol station employees were injured in Pattani province, the army said.
All four were admitted to hospitals, none with serious injuries, a Thai army spokesman told AFP.
Thailand’s Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul told reporters that security agencies believed the attacks were a “signal” timed with elections for local administrators taking place on Sunday, and “not aimed at insurgency.”
The army’s commander in the south, Narathip Phoynok, told reporters he ordered security measures raised to the “maximum level in all areas” including at road checkpoints and borders.
The nation’s deep south is culturally distinct from the rest of Buddhist-majority Thailand, which took control of the region more than a century ago.
The area is heavily policed by Thai security forces — the usual targets of insurgent attacks.
