France paid tribute on Thursday to the journalists, police officers and shoppers at a kosher store killed two years ago by Islamist gunmen, the first of a wave of militant attacks that has left more than 230 dead and triggered a state of emergency, reports The Sydney Morning Herald.
On a cold day in Paris, uniformed police, ministers and the city's mayor stood in silence outside the old office of the Charlie Hebdo magazine and other sites as floral wreaths tied in blue-white-and-red ribbons were laid to mark the anniversary.
The killing spree shocked the world and preceded further attacks that did little for the declining popularity of President François Hollande and deepened tensions between France's secular state and its large Muslim minority.
In November 2015, militant gunmen and suicide bombers struck entertainment venues across Paris, killing 130 people. Last year a Tunisian who pledged allegiance to Islamic State ploughed his truck through a crowd in the Mediterranean city of Nice, killing 86 people.
Other chilling attacks included the murder of an elderly Catholic priest at a church altar, and the fatal stabbing of a policeman.
Thursday's tributes started at the old premises of the satirical magazine, since abandoned for a secret location. It was there that two brothers armed with assault rifles shot and killed 11 people on Jan 7, 2015, including most of the notoriously irreverent publication's cartoonists and writers.
Homage was then paid at the nearby site where a policeman was shot dead at point-blank range by one of the two gunmen.
Charlie Hebdo, at the time a cash-starved publication whose office had been firebombed after it printed cartoons mocking the prophet Mohammad, has since been buoyed by millions of euros of subscriptions, many of them out of solidarity in countries where it was an almost unknown entity before the attacks.