News / France

Paris remembers victims of terror attacks + Timeline

Monday, 19 September 2016 11:34 AM [ Last Update: Monday, 19 September 2016 11:41 AM ]

A man places flowers at a monument at the end of France's national tribute to victims of terrorism in Paris on September 19, 2016. (Photo by AFP)

France has commemorated all victims of the recent terror attacks that shook the country to its core. A memorial service has been held in the capital Paris to honor the memory of all those people who unjustly lost their lives to vicious acts of terror and violence.

Hundreds of victims’ families and people who sustained injuries in the attacks attended Monday’s ceremony.

President Francois Hollande and former president Nicolas Sarkozy also took part in the event during which the names of all victims of attacks carried out by Takfiri terrorists in Paris last year and in Nice in July this year were read out.

"Our country had never been attacked to this extent, with such destructive rage, with such barbarian cruelty. That's why it was so important for names, all names to be evoked," Hollande said.

The ceremony also commemorated those killed in terror attacks in Brussels, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast and Mali.

Hollande also hailed the courage of the survivors present at the event, stressing the need for helping and supporting them and their families. "You've been through a tragedy, yet you want to live, you're fighting for it, and you will stand up again. Your energy is an example," Hollande said.

France terror attacks: A timeline

March 22, 2012: French police move in to kill Mohammed Merah, a self-styled al-Qaeda-inspired gunman, after he takes the lives of seven people in the city of Toulouse in a 12-day killing spree. Merah, a Frenchman of Algerian origin, killed three soldiers, three Jewish children and a rabbi before he was shot dead following a 30-hour standoff with security forces.

A woman speaks with a police officer near a building where the chief suspect in an al-Qaeda-linked killing spree is holed up in an apartment in Toulouse, southern France, on March 22, 2012. (Photo by AP)

January 7, 2015: Two Takfiri militants attack Charlie Hebdo magazine, killing 12 people, including top editorial staff. The attack is largely believed to have been launched over the weekly’s insulting cartoons of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH). A day after the magazine attack, another militant kills a policewoman. On January 9, he also takes people hostage at the HyperCacher supermarket and kills four of them before being shot dead by police. On the same day, the escaped Charlie Hebdo gunmen are killed in a printing plant in Dammartin-en-Goele north of Paris.

A man walks past flowers laid near the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris on Feb. 6, 2015. (Photo by AP)

November 13, 2015: Daesh launches a series of violent attacks, targeting cafes and a concert hall in Paris, and massacring a total of 130 people. On the same day, three bombers explode themselves and kill a bystander in a stadium in Saint-Denis.

Police and rescuers gather in front of a fast-food drive-thru restaurant outside the Stade de France stadium in Saint-Denis, north of Paris, on November 13, 2015. (Photo by AFP)

July 14, 2016: A truck driver deliberately plows through a Bastille Day crowd in Nice, killing 84 people and wounding 200 others. An 85th victim of the attack, claimed by Daesh, dies later in hospital.

Local authorities and people observe a minute of silence in front of the high commission in Papeete, the capital of the French Polynesian island of Tahiti, on July 18, 2016, in tribute to the victims of the deadly Nice attack on Bastille Day. (Photo by AFP)

July 26, 2016: Two knife-wielding men loyal to Daesh take a number of people hostage at a church in Normandy. The attackers kill a 85-year-old Roman Catholic priest. Police later shoots dead the two assailants.