World

ISLAMABAD — One month on from a Taliban school massacre in Peshawar that left 150 dead a new movement is growing among marginalised urban liberals rallying to "Reclaim Pakistan" from violent extremism.

Carrying placards and candles, their stand against religious fanaticism is an unusual sight in a country more used to mass demonstrations by Islamist groups filled with chants against the West or India.

Muhammad Jibran Nasir, a 27-year-old lawyer who has played a key role in organising demonstrations, said he and others felt they could no longer stand by following the brutal killings of schoolchildren in the country's northwest on December 16.

"I never felt so overwhelmed. I felt pathetic as a human being, as a Muslim, as a Pakistani. I felt very, very small," he said.

While Pakistan's military has been engaged in heavy offensives in the country's northwestern tribal areas, progressive critics believe the state — including both the army and political parties — must do more to tackle those Islamist groups that have traditionally received official backing.

In an effort to highlight the discrepancy, Nasir, who happened to be visiting Islamabad at the time of the Peshawar assault, led like-minded activists to protest outside the radical Red Mosque, whose imam is known for his pro-Taliban views and who has refused to condemn the attack on the school.

Maulana Abdul Aziz led an armed insurrection against the military in 2007, but was acquitted of all charges against him by 2013 in a case which analysts say highlights weaknesses in Pakistan's judicial system and sympathies for militants among parts of the security establishment.

The "Reclaim" movement's first small victory was the re-opening of an investigation against Aziz, said Nasir.

"There's an arrest warrant out, police say they are doing their own investigation," he told AFP, adding he was hopeful that more pressure could result in firm action.

He now says he has been threatened not just by Aziz but by the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar faction of the Pakistani Taliban over the phone. But, as someone who considers himself an observant Muslim, he felt he could no longer see his faith hijacked.

"I've got some views on my religion, I read on it, I research on it to an extent. I can't seem to reconcile the preachings of my imam and the teachings of the Koran," he says.

 'Concerned for our own humanity' 

The movement has spread over social media, particularly Facebook, with like-minded groups in the major cities of Lahore and Karachi coordinating their protests and condemning local militant groups that operate in those areas.

Analysts believe some militant groups receive backing from the state because they can be used as assets by Pakistan to exert influence in India and Afghanistan — a strategy which progressives are keen to see ended.

"We are basically people who are concerned for our own humanity. If we do not take some kind of stance we may very well stay alive but we lose our own humanity by being lazy. It makes us complicit," said 36-year-old Taimur Khan, an entrepreneur who is part of the Reclaim movement in Islamabad.

Progressives remain a relatively small minority, confined to the educated upper and middle-classes — a fact bemoaned by Nasir.

He contrasted the crowds of hundreds at Reclaim rallies with the estimated 1.6 million Parisians who took to the streets to condemn the deadly attack on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

"Pakistan is desensitised. But in Paris, millions came out. That has made those 12 lives the centre of attention for the entire world," he said.

"We have lost 55,000 people to terrorism but we struggle to justify our case to the world that we are doing enough to curb terrorism."

But he also sees hope for a broader coalition involving the working class. On January 16, exactly one month after the attack, the Reclaim movement held its biggest events to date across Pakistan's major cities.

The few thousand people who turned out included female polio workers who have come under attack by the Taliban, relatives of fallen soldiers, and the father and child of a female Christian bonded labourer who was burnt to death for allegedly committing blasphemy along with her mother.

In Islamabad, protesters laid out symbolic coffins carrying the names of each of the children who died in Peshawar.

Sundas Hoorain, a 29-year-old lawyer from Lahore, said the event could prove a turning point.

"More and more people are joining in because they agree with us. The narrative now resonates beyond the elites... People are saying 'When you attack children, that's it'," she said.

BRUSSELS — Belgium on Saturday began deploying scores of troops to patrol the streets after security forces smashed a suspected Islamist "terrorist" cell planning to kill police officers.

Some 150 soldiers took up positions in the northern town of Antwerp, notably to protect diamond jewellers and a large concentration of Orthodox Jews.

The NATO headquarters, various EU offices and the US and Israeli embassies are also in the area, as well as Brussels' main synagogue, said Defence Minister Steven Vandeput.

Antwerp has a large Jewish population.

"The mobilised troops will be armed and their primary responsibility will be to survey certain sites" and to reinforce police, Prime Minister Charles Michel's office said in a statement.

Outside the Jewish Museum of Brussels, where a jihadist atttacker killed four people in May 2014, armed soldiers stood watch.

Up to 300 troops may be deployed in the biggest operation since the terrorist bombings carried out by he Communist Combatant Cells of the mid-1980s.

Soldiers have also been requested at the industrial eastern city of Verviers, where early on Friday security forces killed two suspected Islamists in a huge raid on an alleged jihadist cell allegedly planning to attack police in the country.

The Belgian raid came a week after Islamist attacks in and around Paris killed 17 people, rekindling fears in Europe about the threat posed by young Europeans returning home after fighting alongside extremist groups in the Middle East.

Following the raid in Verviers, Belgian police arrested 13 people across Belgium, five of whom were later charged with "participating in the activities of a terrorist group”.

Weapons, bomb-making materials, police uniforms and fake documents were found during searches of their homes.

Belgian prosecutors said there were no immediate links with last week's Islamist attacks in Paris on the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine, a Jewish supermarket and a policewoman, the country's worst attacks in half a century.

Two fugitives who left Belgium immediately after the attack have been arrested in the French Alps.

The suspected mastermind of the cell, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, is a notorious 27-year-old jihadist who spent time in Syria and who may have prepared the foiled attack from bases in Greece and Turkey, according to local media.

'Possible logistical support' 

French and Belgian authorities were grilling suspected accomplices both of the Paris gunmen and the alleged "terrorist" cell raided in eastern Belgium.

French police separately arrested 12 people early Friday and questioned them about "possible logistical support" they may have given to the Paris gunmen — Islamist brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi and Amedy Coulibaly, sources said.

The raid came less than a year after four people were shot dead in an attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels. A Frenchman who fought in Syria has been charged with the murders.

With France still reeling from the attacks that targeted its cherished traditions of free speech, US Secretary of State John Kerry laid wreaths on Friday at both the Charlie Hebdo offices and the Jewish supermarket during a visit to Paris.

The United States condemned the violence, saying there was a "universal" right of the press to freely publish any kind of information, including caricatures.

In Washington, US President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron vowed to help France and others defeat global terrorism with stronger cooperation and surveillance.

In London, authorities were mulling "further measures" to protect police "given some of the deliberate targeting of the police we have seen in a number of countries across Europe and the world," said Mark Rowley, head of counter-terrorism for the British police.

PARIS — French President Francois Hollande said Thursday that Muslims were the "main victims" of fanaticism, as five of the 17 people killed in last week's Islamist attacks in Paris were laid to rest.

Speaking at the Arab World Institute in Paris, Hollande said: "It is Muslims who are the main victims of fanaticism, fundamentalism and intolerance", adding the whole country was "united in the face of terrorism".

Members of the Muslim community in France, Europe's largest, have "the same rights and the same duties as all citizens" and must be "protected", the president vowed.

The five buried included two of Charlie Hebdo's best-known cartoonists.

Even as the ceremonies took place, the satirical magazine continued to fly off the shelves, sparking fury in some parts of the Muslim world for depicting the Prophet Mohammad on its cover.

Georges Wolinski, 80, and Bernard "Tignous" Verlhac, 57, were buried at private family funerals after they were gunned down by two Islamist brothers in the attack claimed by Al Qaeda.

Thousands braved drizzle outside the town hall memorial service for Tignous, laying flowers under a huge portrait of the cartoonist as his wife Chloe paid tribute inside.

His cartoon-covered coffin was carried through an applauding crowd for final burial.

After the shooting at Charlie Hebdo, in which 12 people died, the French rushed to get their hands on the “survivors’ issue” which sold out Wednesday before more copies of an eventual print run of five million hit newsstands.

Long queues formed again on Thursday as copies were snapped up.

“Charlie Hebdo is alive and will live on,” Hollande said Wednesday. “You can murder men and women, but you can never kill their ideas,” he said, declaring the previously struggling weekly “reborn”.

The Charlie Hebdo assault on January 7 was followed two days later by an attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris by a gunman claiming to have coordinated his actions with brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi.

In all, 17 people died over three days in the bloodiest attacks in France in half a century, which ended when police stormed two hostage sieges and killed all three gunmen. 

Several hundred people including Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, paid tribute at the burial of Franck Brinsolaro, 49, a police protection officer who was killed in the Charlie Hebdo editorial meeting.

Many wore “je suis Francky” badges.

In Wednesday’s new edition of Charlie Hebdo, the prophet is depicted with a tear in his eye, under the headline “All is forgiven”.

He holds a sign reading “Je suis Charlie” (I am Charlie), the slogan that has become a global rallying cry for those expressing sympathy for the victims and support for freedom of speech.

Speaking at Tignous’ funeral, Justice Minister Christiane Taubira said France was a country where “one can draw anything, including a prophet”.

But the cover of the new Charlie Hebdo has sparked controversy and protests in some parts of the Muslim world, where many find the depiction of the prophet highly offensive.

Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen, where at least one of the Kouachi brothers trained, released a video Wednesday claiming responsibility for the attack, saying it was “vengeance” for the cartoons of the prophet.

The Afghan Taliban on Thursday condemned Charlie Hebdo’s publication of further Mohammed cartoons and praised the gunmen.

Angry protests have been staged in countries from Pakistan and Turkey to the Philippines and Mauritania.

Amedy Coulibaly, who shot dead four Jewish men at a kosher supermarket in Paris and a policewoman the day before in attacks he said were coordinated with the Kouachi brothers, has claimed links to the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq.

A Spanish High Court judge on Thursday announced a preliminary investigation into a stay Coulibaly made in Madrid days before the attacks.

A Turkish court ordered a block on websites featuring images of the magazine cover and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Thursday described it as a “grave provocation”, adding: “Freedom of the press does not mean freedom to insult.”

But many have sought to calm tensions, with French Muslim leaders urging their communities to “stay calm and avoid emotive reactions”.

France continued to receive support from its Western allies, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel vowing the two countries would “stand together in these difficult days”.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, who will fly into Paris later Thursday to pay his respects to the dead, said he wanted to give the capital a “big hug”.

But speaking in Manila, Pope Francis stressed that “you cannot provoke, you cannot insult other people’s faith, you cannot mock it”.

France has deployed armed police to protect synagogues and Jewish schools and called up 10,000 troops to guard against other attacks.

Authorities have admitted “clear failings” in intelligence. The three gunmen were known to French intelligence and on a US terror watch list “for years”.

Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws reported that Coulibaly bought weapons — including assault rifles and a rocket launcher — near the international station in Brussels for less than 5,000 euros ($7,000).

LAGOS — US Secretary of State John Kerry branded a Boko Haram massacre in northern Nigeria a "crime against humanity" Thursday as satellite images suggested massive destruction in the two towns reported razed by its fighters.

"What they have done... is a crime against humanity, nothing less," Kerry said as first images of what is feared to be the worst atrocity of the six-year Islamist insurgency emerged.

Hundreds of people, if not more, are reported to have been killed in attacks on the towns of Baga and Doron Baga on the shores of Lake Chad in Borno state, according to Amnesty International.

Boko Haram was "evil" and a serious threat "not just in Nigeria and the region but to all of our values", Kerry said during a visit to Bulgaria. He said he had spoken earlier to his British counterpart Philip Hammond — who was also in Sofia — about the possibility of "a special initiative with respect to Nigeria and with respect to Boko Haram".

Amnesty and New York-based watchdog Human Rights Watch published separate satellite images Thursday claiming to show massive destruction in the adjacent towns, adding to fears they may suffered the deadliest strike yet in Boko Haram's bloody campaign.

Amnesty's images showed aerial shots of the towns on January 2 — the day before the attack — and January 7, after homes and businesses were razed.

'Catastrophic' devastation 

The group said the images suggested "devastation of catastrophic proportions", with more than 3,700 structures — 620 in Baga and 3,100 in Doron Baga — damaged or completely destroyed.

HRW said 11 per cent of Baga and 57 per cent of Doron Baga was destroyed, most likely by fire, attributing the greater damage in Doron Baga to the fact that it houses a regional military base.

Nigeria's military, which often downplays death tolls, said that 150 died and dismissed as "sensational" claims that 2,000 may have lost their lives in the attacks.

Local officials have said at least 16 settlements around Baga were burnt to the ground and that at least 20,000 people fled.

HRW said the exact death toll was unknown and quoted one local resident as saying: "No one stayed back to count the bodies.

"We were all running to get out of town ahead of Boko Haram fighters who have since taken over the area."

Amnesty said Boko Haram were believed to have targeted civilian vigilantes helping the army after they overran a Multinational Joint Task Force base for troops from Nigeria, Niger and Chad who have been involved in operations against them.

'Killed in labour' 

Harrowing testimony has been emerging from survivors about the scale and brutality of the assault in Baga, included one woman reportedly killed while in labour.

Witnesses who spoke to AFP described seeing decomposing bodies in the streets and one man who escaped after hiding for three days said he was "stepping on bodies" as he fled through the bush.

Amnesty said on Thursday it had received accounts from survivors of Boko Haram fighters killing a woman as she was giving birth, during indiscriminate fire that also cut down small children.

"Half of the baby boy [was] out and she died like this," the unnamed witness was quoted as saying.

A man in his 50s added: "They killed so many people. I saw maybe around 100 killed at that time in Baga. I ran to the bush. As we were running, they were shooting and killing."

Another woman said: "I don't know how many but there were bodies everywhere we looked."

Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Tuesday that its team in capital of Borno state, Maiduguri, was providing assistance to 5,000 survivors of the attack.

The UN refugee agency has said that more than 11,300 Nigerian refugees fled into neighbouring Chad.

Some 300 women were said to have been rounded up and detained at a school, witnesses told Amnesty, adding that older women, mothers and children were released after four days but younger women kept.

Amnesty said the witness accounts and images reinforced fears the attack was Boko Haram's "largest and most destructive" in its fight to establish a hardline Islamic state in northeast Nigeria, which has killed over 13,000 people since 2009.

"The deliberate killing of civilians and destruction of their property by Boko Haram are war crimes and crimes against humanity and must be duly investigated," it added.

The Baga attack came before presidential and parliamentary elections in Nigeria next month and an upsurge in violence apparently designed to undermine the vote.

Nigeria's electoral commission said voting was "unlikely" in rebel-controlled areas and arrangements were being made to allow hundreds of thousands of displaced people to cast their ballots.

KIEV — Ukraine on Thursday renewed accusations of a Russian military build up on its border and approved fresh troop mobilisations as a wave of violence threatened all-out conflict in the country's war-torn east.

A national day of mourning was held for 13 people killed on Tuesday when a rocket exploded near a commuter bus travelling towards the Ukrainian city of Donetsk, the worst loss of civilian life since a September truce that only partially halted the violence.

An upsurge in fighting has rocked eastern Ukraine in recent days, with a planned peace summit between President Petro Poroshenko and the leaders of Russia, Germany and France having been postponed.

Heavy artillery and shelling shook the area around the airport in the rebel bastion of Donetsk, while pro-Kremlin insurgents had earlier been accused of unleashing a massive rocket assault.

Oleksandr Turchynov, secretary of Ukraine's national security council, evoked a dire scenario before parliament, saying a resumption of major attacks by rebels could lead to a "large-scale continental war" if Russian troops were to also become more directly involved.

But he also spoke of another possibility — one described by a number of analysts as well — in which Russia would continue to prevent eastern Ukraine from being stabilised, causing the ex-Soviet republic to exhaust its economic and defence resources.

Such a strategy would aim, according to analysts, at keeping Ukraine from integrating more closely with the West, with the country already suffering economically and requiring billions of dollars from world lenders.

Russia strongly denies sending troops and weapons into the war zone despite witness claims to the contrary. On Thursday, Turchynov claimed some 8,500 Russian army soldiers were backing around 30,000 rebels in eastern Ukraine.

He also alleged that some 52,000 Russian troops were stationed near the Ukraine border along with tanks, armoured vehicles, artillery systems and combat helicopters.

In the face of the alleged threat, Ukraine on Thursday adopted a law allowing for three waves of reservist troop mobilisation this year, with the first, involving some 50,000 people, set for January 20.

The moves drew a sharp response from the separatist leader in Donetsk.

"Ukraine is preparing for war," Alexander Zakharchenko told reporters. "We are ready to respond adequately. We are not weak."

'Je Suis Volnovakha' 

The fresh violence comes after weeks of relative calm and served as a reminder of the war's worst clashes last summer. In the most recent violence, two Ukrainian soldiers and two civilians were killed, Ukrainian authorities said.

Intense fighting shook the airport in the rebel bastion of Donetsk, an area repeatedly wracked by clashes. Observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe were due to visit the area later Thursday.

Witnesses reported hearing heavy artillery and bombings near the airport, while about 15 rebels and a few Ukrainian soldiers could be seen in the street trying to negotiate a pause in the violence themselves.

The bus tragedy on Tuesday at a checkpoint at the entrance to the city of Volnovakha shook the nation, with an online "Je Suis Volnovakha" campaign spreading, an imitation of the rallying cry used in the wake of the attack on the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper in Paris. Poroshenko himself used it in a Facebook post.

On Thursday, a minute of silence was observed at noon and flags were flown at half-mast.

Poroshenko had earlier discussed the tragedy in telephone conversations with French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Both sides have traded blame over the bus tragedy, while Poroshenko argued that ultimate responsibility rested with Russia due to its alleged support of the rebels.

The rocket strike and renewed violence damaged Poroshenko's efforts to set up a peace summit where Putin could personally sign a truce under which the Kremlin assumes responsibility for disarming the militias and dispelling their independence claims.

A lack of progress in talks between ministers in Berlin this week led to the summit being postponed. On Thursday, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and Poroshenko agreed that the delayed talks set for the Kazakhstan capital Astana will take place at the end of the month.

BERLIN — Germany will tighten a foreign travel ban on known Islamists to stop them heading to war zones such as Syria, the Cabinet decided Wednesday, a week after the Charlie Hebdo attacks.

The law is the first of a host of previously planned security measures which Chancellor Angela Merkel's government wants to speedily pass through parliament in the coming weeks following the bloodshed in France.

"The horrific events in Paris... showed once more, in a depressing manner, that we must strongly defend our democratic constitutional order with all legal means against international terrorism, fanaticism and radicalisation," said Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert.

German authorities can already confiscate the passports of known jihadists, but under the new law they will also be able to take away their national identity cards, which can be used for travel to Turkey and within the EU Schengen no-visa area.

Suspects will instead be handed replacement ID cards for periods of up to three years that are stamped with a no-travel advisory in several languages.

More than 600 German citizens have taken part in the fighting in Syria and Iraq, and about 60 have died there, the newspaper Rheinische Post reported, citing security sources.

About 180 are believed to have returned to Germany.

At least 20 Islamists used their identity cards to reach the war zone after having their passports confiscated, Die Welt daily reported Tuesday.

They travelled either overland or by air, some via Belgium or the Netherlands to obscure their movements, and mostly on to Turkey to cross the porous land border into Syria, according to the interior ministry.

The bill must still pass parliament, where the government has a strong majority.

Opposition parties have objected to what they have dubbed the new "terrorist-ID".

The far-left Linke called the measure "disproportionate" and stigmatising for suspects, while Greens party lawmaker Irene Mihalic warned that suspected radicals who are asked to give up their ID cards "may move immediately to realise their sinister plans".

Germany also plans this month to criminalise any planning to join jihadist fighting or weapons-training abroad, tightening a law from 2009 that punishes offenders only when they return.

The law would target, for example, suspects trying to leave Germany with weapons, bulletproof vests or night vision equipment.

"There will be a new law to make it a crime for jihadists to leave the country," Justice Minister Heiko Maas said, adding that it would bring Germany into compliance with a UN resolution to stop so-called foreign fighters.

Maas also wants to push through a bill to toughen penalties for terrorist financing, even when the amounts are very small.

ANKARA — Warriors from Turkic history, some in chainmail, others bearing spears, will be a regular feature of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s welcome for foreign leaders, sources at his office said, after their first outing drew ridicule from opponents.

Months after the inauguration of a vast new palace complex, Erdogan’s efforts to imbue more pomp into the previously largely ceremonial role of head of state took an unexpected turn during this week’s visit of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Official pictures from the welcome ceremony on Monday showed Abbas and Erdogan posing at the bottom of a staircase, with 16 soldiers arrayed behind them in a range of historical costumes, complete with ornate helmets, swords and spears.

The pictures sparked a storm of reaction on social media — some of it ridicule — with digitally altered mock-ups replacing the costumed guards with characters from the films Star Wars and Lord of the Rings.

Leading Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtas, who lost to Erdogan in last year’s presidential poll, told local TV channel Haberturk that Erdogan could have completed the picture by dressing up as “Ibrahim the Mad” a 17th century sultan.

Presidential sources said each soldier represented a period of Turkic history, from the central Asian Hunnic Empire of 200 BC all the way through to the Ottoman Empire that was dissolved in 1922. They also said the soldiers would be a feature of future welcoming ceremonies.

Celebrating Turkic historical might is not without its supporters, particularly among nationalists loyal to the ruling AK Party, keen to bolster its support in the run-up to parliamentary elections in June.

“Those who are disturbed by the 16 guardians at the presidency, tell them to go join a crusader army,” wrote one prominent AKP supporter on Twitter, likening the Queen of England’s carriage to that of Cinderella.

BERLIN — A day after calling Islam part of Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel said her government would use all means at its disposal to fight intolerance and discrimination, calling the exclusion of certain groups from society "humanly reprehensible".

Her comments came a day after 25,000 anti-Islam demonstrators marched in the eastern German city of Dresden to demand stricter immigration rules and an end to multiculturalism.

"What we need to do now is to use all the means at our disposal as a constitutional state to combat intolerance and violence," Merkel said at a conference in Berlin.

Nearly 100,000 people are estimated to have participated in counterdemonstrations against racism in other marches across Germany on Monday. And the Dresden-based movement, called PEGIDA or Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West, has drawn far fewer supporters in other cities.

But it represents a major political challenge for Merkel. Her conservative party includes immigration sceptics and members of a surging new right-wing party called the Alternative for Germany (AfD) have allied with PEGIDA.

A recent poll by the Bertelsmann Foundation showed 57 per cent of non-Muslim Germans feel threatened by Islam, and it was conducted before deadly attacks by Islamic militants in Paris killed 17 people last week.

Speaking before taking part later on Tuesday in a Berlin vigil organised by Muslim groups for the victims of the Paris attacks, Merkel delivered one of her strongest repudiations of the PEGIDA movement and its sympathisers.

"To exclude groups of people because of their faith, this isn't worthy of the free state in which we live. It isn't compatible with our essential values. And its humanly reprehensible," Merkel said. "Xenophobia, racism, extremism have no place here. We are fighting to ensure that they don't have a place elsewhere either."

Her comment on Monday that "Islam belongs to Germany", made at a news conference with the visiting Turkish prime minister, was plastered on the front page of many leading newspapers.

It drew criticism from some politicians, including Wolfgang Bosbach, a veteran member of her Christian Democrats (CDU).

"What Islam does she mean? Does this include fundamental Islamist and Salafist currents?," Bosbach told the Saarbruecker Zeitung newspaper. "Germany has a Judeo-Christian, not an Islamic, cultural tradition."

With one of the lowest birth rates in Europe, Germany faces a demographic crisis over the coming decade and Merkel's government is encouraging immigration to combat this.

In 2013, Germany saw net immigration of 437,000 people, mainly from Eastern Europe, its highest level in 20 years. It also welcomed close to 200,000 asylum seekers last year, many from war-torn Syria. Roughly 4 million Muslims live in Germany, most of them of Turkish origin.

PARIS — President Francois Hollande vowed Tuesday that France would "never yield" to terror in an emotional tribute to three police officers shot dead in an Islamist killing spree, as four Jews gunned down in the attacks were buried in Israel.

Equally defiant after the killing of most of its editorial team in last week's attacks, the satirical Charlie Hebdo magazine unveiled the cover of its latest edition showing a weeping Prophet Mohammad under the banner "All is forgiven".

Egypt slammed the provocative cover which was republished across Europe, in Australia and Brazil, but French Muslim groups urged their communities to "stay calm and avoid emotive reactions" to the depiction of Mohammad, which many see as sacrilegious.

Home to Europe's largest Jewish and Muslim communities, France was shaken to the core by its bloodiest attacks in decades, which began when gunmen opened fire at the Charlie Hebdo editorial meeting in its Paris offices on Wednesday and ended in a bloody hostage drama at a Jewish supermarket two days later.

Seventeen people, including journalists, policemen, a black policewoman, Muslims and Jews lost their lives.

The supermarket killer, Amedy Coulibaly, and the Charlie Hebdo gunmen, Said and Cherif Kouachi, were killed in quick succession in two police blitzes on Friday.

 'They died for our freedom' 

In an historic show of solidarity, nearly four million people marched around the country on Sunday, and the outpouring of shock and grief continued Tuesday as several victims were buried.

In Paris, the Marseillaise anthem rang out under grey skies as a grim-faced Hollande laid the country's highest decoration, the Legion d'honneur, on to the coffins of three fallen police officers draped in the red, white and blue flag.

"Our great and beautiful France will never break, will never yield, never bend" in the face of the Islamist threat that is "still there, inside and outside" the country, said Hollande, surrounded by weeping families and uniformed colleagues

Two policemen, Franck Brinsolaro, 49, and Muslim officer Ahmed Merabet, 40, were killed during the attack on Charlie Hebdo.

The third police officer Clarissa Jean-Philippe, 26, originally from the French Caribbean island of Martinique, was gunned down by Coulibaly the next day when she arrived at the scene of a car accident in which he was involved. Many believe he was on his way to a nearby Jewish school.

"They died so that we could live in freedom," Hollande said at a solemn ceremony at the Paris police headquarters.

In Israel, thousands of mourners gathered at a cemetery for the funeral of Tunisian national Yoav Hattab, 22, and French citizens Philippe Braham, 45, Yohan Cohen, 23, and Francois-Michel Saada, 64, who were killed at the kosher supermarket.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told mourners that world leaders were "starting to understand" the threat of Islamic extremism.

 'Unjustified provocation' 

Egypt's state sponsored Islamic authority, the Dar Al Ifta, said the latest cover of Charlie Hebdo was "an unjustified provocation against the feelings of 1.5 billion Muslims".

The controversial weekly, which lampoons anyone from the Pope to the president, has become the symbol of freedom of expression in the wake of the bloodshed. This week it is preparing a print run of three million copies, compared to its usual 60,000.

To ease fears in a nation still jittery after its worst attacks in half a century, Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian announced that some 10,000 troops will be deployed to protect sensitive sites.

He said the unprecedented deployment on home soil was being handled like "a military operation".

Prime Minister Manuel Valls will on Tuesday address parliament on the country's response to the terror threat, as attention turns to security failings that allowed men known to anti-terror police to slip through the cracks.

Valls has admitted there were "clear failings" after it emerged that the Kouachi brothers had been known to French intelligence agents and been on a US terror watch list "for years".

The brothers carried out the Charlie Hebdo attack before leading security forces on a massive manhunt that climaxed at a small printing business outside Paris where they took the manager hostage.

Police gunned them down after they ran out of the building spraying bullets in a final act of defiance.

Coulibaly, who on Friday took hostages at the kosher supermarket, killing four before being shot down in a dramatic police assault, claimed he had coordinated his acts with the brothers.

The repeat criminal offender had also been convicted for extremist activity and swore allegiance to the Islamic State group.

 Hunt goes on 

As investigators hunted for those who may have assisted the killers, images of Coulibaly's wanted partner Hayat Boumeddiene emerged at Istanbul airport accompanied by an unidentified man. She is believed to have entered Turkey before the attacks and went on to Syria.

"We think there are in fact probably accomplices," Valls told French radio. "The hunt will go on."

In Bulgaria it emerged a Frenchman arrested on January 1 trying to cross into Turkey was in contact with Cherif Kouachi.

France has been on high alert for several months over its citizens who go to fight alongside Islamic State jihadists in Iraq and Syria, some of whom have been pictured in grisly execution videos.

Valls also said 1,400 people were known to have left to fight in Syria and Iraq, or were planning to do so. Seventy French citizens have died there.

IS has issued direct threats against France which is carrying out air strikes against them in Iraq as part of a US-led coalition.

KIEV — Shelling hit a passenger bus in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday, killing at least 10 people, and fighting intensified around the international airport in the city of Donetsk as separatists tried to oust government forces.

The bus attack near the town of Volnovakha south of Donetsk, which is the heart of a nine-month-old separatist conflict, further deflated peace hopes after talks between Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany ended without notable progress on Monday. Pro-Russian rebels seized parts of eastern Ukraine after Kiev’s Moscow-backed president was toppled by popular unrest.

“Ten people have been killed and at least 13 are wounded,” a regional Ukrainian administration spokesman said, adding that the bus came under attack from rebels holding the town of Dokuchaevska further to the north.

He said the bus was carrying civilians from the coastal town of Mariupol through a government checkpoint. Separatist leaders denied responsibility for the shelling, saying the incident occurred at a rebel checkpoint.

Photographs showed the bus peppered by holes, as were seats inside it. A long trail of blood marked the road beside it.

Fighting intensified around Donetsk airport as prospects faded for a new big-power effort to end the conflict, which has cost more than 4,700 lives and stoked East-West tension recalling the Cold War over Western accusations of Russian military backing for the rebels. Moscow denies this.

Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France scrapped plans to hold a summit in Kazakhstan later this week because of the failure to implement a four-month-old ceasefire agreement fully and there was no sign of when it might be rescheduled.

Reports from Donetsk said a significant part of the airport’s multi-storey control tower — already a wrecked hulk with cabling and concrete dangling from it after months of shelling — had been destroyed.

After a night of attacks from separatists using Grad missile launchers, the rebels began firing from tanks on the airport’s new terminal, which was still being held by Ukrainian government forces, the Kiev military said in a statement.

“The Russian military and the terrorists have deliberately chosen the tactic of escalation of tension,” military spokesman Andriy Lysenko told journalists. One Ukrainian soldier had been killed and 10 wounded in overnight fighting. 

Symbolic value

The Sergei Prokofiev airport complex, opened to great fanfare by the now ousted president Viktor Yanukovich to mark the Euro 2012 football championship, has progressively disintegrated under months of fire and is now a shattered hulk.

But though it has not functioned as an airport since the onset of hostilities last April, with its runways cratered by shell holes, it has symbolic value for both sides and government forces have repelled repeated rebel attempts to dislodge them.

“After nine months of confrontation in Donetsk airport the [separatist] fighters have succeeded in bringing down the top [of the control tower] to the fifth floor,” Lysenko said.

In the capital Kiev, a parliamentary deputy said government forces had been given an ultimatum by the rebels to pull out of the airport by 5pm (1500 GMT) “or face destruction”.

This could not be confirmed from the separatist side.

The Russian, German and French government leaders had been invited to talks on Thursday in the Kazakh capital Astana by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

But the four countries’ foreign ministers said after meeting in Berlin that the failure to implement the ceasefire deal and the need to agree on how to deliver aid and free prisoners meant “further work needs to be done” before a summit is held.