President Francois Hollande on Tuesday vowed 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 attack were buried in Israel.
The Marseillaise anthem rang out under grey skies as a grim-faced Hollande pinned the country’s highest decoration, the legion d’honneur, onto coffins draped in the red, white and blue flag, surrounded by weeping families and uniformed colleagues.
“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.
The country has been shaken to its core by the bloodshed that began with an assault on the satirical Charlie Hebdo magazine on Wednesday and ended in a bloody hostage drama at a Jewish supermarket two days later.