World leaders have joined tens of thousands of people in a giant rally of national unity to honour the 17 victims of the Paris terror attacks.
"Today, Paris is the capital of the world," French President Francois Hollande declared. "Our entire country will rise up toward something better.
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Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas were among the leaders attending, as were top representatives of Russia and Ukraine.
"We are all Charlie, we are all police, we are all Jews of France," Prime Minister Manuel Valls had declared, referring to the victims of the attacks that included employees at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, shoppers at a kosher supermarket and three police officers.
The vast crowds set off along two routes towards Place de la Nation, walking boldly through streets that on Wednesday were filled with fear after two brothers gunned down 12 people at the nearby offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
As the people gathered, waves of applause rippled out from Place de la Republique along all the roads leading to it, which were quickly gridlocked.
There were few large placards but the vast majority of the very mixed crowd displayed the “Je Suis Charlie” slogan in a variety of ways, from T-shirts and stickers to face paints and hair bands.
Some held messages of solidarity in Arabic while others pointed to other aspects of the week’s terror – publicly declaring their pride in the Jewish faith via posters.
The Place de la Republique has seen countless huge demonstrations in its time, but even veterans such as Momo said he had never seen such a volume of people crowding past his nearby hat shop.
While he applauded the march as an essential riposte to the terrorists, he was pessimistic about its power to effect change.
“The killings will not stop,” he said – and was unable to suggest any other action he truly believed might help.
Among those showing more hope for change was Agnes Demongeot, who had made a placard featuring what she hoped would be three values cherished by a new generation alongside the republican trio of freedom, equality and brotherhood: tolerance, intelligence and impertinence.
She reflected the views of many joining the march in explaining that while Charlie Hebdo played a key part in her own political education, she was proud that so many of those around her were not fans of the magazine, but passionate nonetheless about the need to defend freedom of speech.
One group of intrepid marchers scaled the huge statue in the middle of the square and draped it with flags from across the world before leading the masses in chants of “Charlie, Charlie!”
Rallies were also planned in London, Madrid and New York - all previously attacked by al Qaida-linked extremists - as well as Cairo, Sydney, Stockholm, Tokyo and elsewhere.
The three days of terror began on Wednesday when brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi stormed the newsroom of Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people.
Al Qaida's branch in Yemen said it directed the attack by the masked gunmen to avenge the honour of the Prophet Mohammed, a frequent target of the weekly's satire.
The following day an accomplice, Amedy Coulibaly killed a policewoman on the outskirts of Paris and on Friday, the attackers converged.
While the Kouachi brothers holed up in a printing plant near Charles de Gaulle airport, Coulibaly seized hostages inside a kosher market. It all ended at dusk Friday with near-simultaneous raids at the printing plant and the market that left all three gunmen dead. Four hostages at the market were also killed.
Five people who were held in connection with the attacks were freed late last night, leaving no one in custody, according to the Paris prosecutor's office.
The widow of the man who attacked the kosher market is still being sought and was last traced near the Turkey-Syrian border.
Earlier, police in Germany detained two men suspected of an arson attack against a newspaper that republished the Charlie Hebdo cartoons. No one was injured in that attack.
"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," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told French TV channel iTele.
It was France's deadliest terrorist attack in decades, and the country remains on high alert while investigators determine whether the attackers were part of a larger extremist network.
More than 5,500 police and soldiers were being deployed today across France, about half of them to protect the march. The others were guarding synagogues, mosques, schools and other sites around France.
"I hope that we will again be able to say we are happy to be Jews in France," said Haim Korsia, the chief rabbi in France, who planned to attend the rally.
"I hope that at the end of the day everyone is united. Everyone, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhists," added Zakaria Moumni, who was at Republique early Sunday.
"We are humans first of all. And nobody deserves to be murdered like that. Nobody."
At an international conference in India, US Secretary of State John Kerry said the world stood with the people of France "not just in anger and in outrage, but in solidarity and commitment to the cause of confronting extremism and in the cause that extremists fear so much and that has always united our countries: freedom".
Posthumous video has emerged of Coulibaly, who prosecutors said was newly linked by ballistics tests to a third shooting - an attack on a jogger in a Paris suburb that left the 32-year-old man gravely injured. In the video, Coulibaly speaks fluent French and broken Arabic, pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group and detailing the terror operation he said was about to unfold
The Kouachi brothers claimed the attacks were planned and financed by al Qaida in Yemen.
The bodies of four French Jews killed in the Paris grocery store will be buried in Israel, Mr Netanyahu said.
In a statement issued from Paris, Mr Netanyahu said he had “acceded to the request of the families of the victims of the murderous terror attack” and directed “all the relevant government bodies” to assist in bringing the bodies to Israel. A funeral is tentatively set for Tuesday.
Mr Netanyahu said earlier he will try to increase immigration of French Jews and others in Europe suffering from a “rising tide of anti-semitism.”