TURKISH PM TO JOIN PARIS ANTI-TERROR RALLY

Ankara, 20 Rabiul Awwal 1436/11 January 2015 (MINA) – Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is set to travel to Paris to attend a mass rally in the French capital to pay tribute to 17 people killed during three days of terrorist attacks.

Davutoglu will travel to Paris on Sunday at the invitation of French President Francois Hollande to express Turkey’s solidarity with the French people, Turkey’s semi-official Anatolia news agency reported on Saturday, as quoted by Press TV and Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA).

France will hold a unity rally on Sunday in condemnation of last Wednesday’s deadly attack on the headquarters of the satirical weekly, Charlie Hebdo.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, Spanish Premier Mariano Rajoy, Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb, and Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel are among the world’s leaders who are expected to attend the mass rally in Paris this weekend.

On Friday, two brothers, Said and Cherif Kouachi, suspected of slaughtering 12 people two days earlier at the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo, were killed after being cornered at a printing workshop with a hostage in the town of Dammartin-en-Goele, northeast of Paris.

On the same day, police ended a second hostage-taking in a supermarket in the eastern Porte de Vincennes area of Paris, killing one armed hostage-taker, Amedy Coulibaly, who was a suspect in killing a policewoman in southern Paris a day earlier. Officials say four hostages were also killed during the raid.

France is among the European countries that have thrown their weight behind militant groups in Syria. (T/P011/R04)

Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)