Paris attacks: Security blankets city ahead of silent march

France vowed to combat terrorism with "a cry for freedom" in a giant rally for unity Sunday after three days of bloodshed that horrified the world.

The rally Sunday is also a huge security challenge for a nation on alert for more violence, after 17 people and three gunmen were killed over three days of attacks on a satirical newspaper, a kosher supermarket and on police that have left France a changed nation. 

Paris is cloaked in security forces as police and military guarded places of worship and tourist sites in preparation for the march, which about two dozen world leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and British Prime Minister David Cameron are expected to attend. 

• TIMELINE | Key events in the Paris attacks
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Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney will represent Canada at the march. Blaney laid a wreath Saturday at the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo, where 12 people were killed earlier this week by brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi. It was the worst attack on French soil in living memory. 

​Blaney laid a wreath Saturday at the headquarters of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, where a dozen people were killed in a terror attack this week.

Blaney told reporters he was there to show the support of Canadians for the French people, adding there is a deep bond between Canada and France.

Michel Robitaille, Quebec's delegate-general in the French capital, will attend on behalf of the province.

'We are exposed to risks'

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said authorities will do everything to ensure security at the event. Speaking after an emergency meeting called by French President Francois Hollande on Saturday morning, Cazeneuve called for "extreme vigilance," saying that "given the context, we are exposed to risks."

In a sign of the tense atmosphere, a security perimeter was briefly imposed at Disneyland Paris on Saturday before being lifted, a spokeswoman said, without elaborating.

Sunday's rally "must show the power, the dignity of the French people who will be shouting out of love of freedom and tolerance," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Saturday.

"Journalists were killed because they defended freedom. Policemen were killed because they were protecting you. Jews were killed because they were Jewish," he said. "The indignation must be absolute and total — not for three days only, but permanently."

Hundreds of thousands of people marched Saturday in cities from Toulouse in the south to Rennes in the west to honour the victims, and Paris expects hundreds of thousands more at Sunday's unity rally. More than 2,000 police are being deployed, in addition to tens of thousands already guarding synagogues, mosques, schools and other sites around France.

"It's no longer like before," said Maria Pinto, on a street in central Paris. "You work a whole life through and because of these madmen, you leave your house to go shopping, go to work, and you don't know if you'll come home."

Hundreds also gathered in New York City and Berlin Saturday, many holding up pens to symbolize freedom of expression or carrying signs that read "Je suis Charlie," French for "I am Charlie" in a show of solidarity with those in France. 

Hunt for 4th suspect

Meanwhile, the French government has launched a massive hunt for the female accomplice of the 32-year-old man who took 19 hostages, killing four, in a kosher supermarket on Friday. 

• Suspect Hayat Boumeddiene hunted by French police

The whereabouts of 26-year-old Hayat Boumeddiene, remains unknown. Police listed her as a suspect in that strike and an earlier killing of a policewoman, describing her as "armed and dangerous."

Turkish officials said on Saturday she may have passed through the country to the border with Syria more than a week ago. 

Interior Minister Cazeneuve said the government is maintaining its terror alert system at the highest level in the Paris region, and said investigators are focusing on determining whether the attackers behind the atrocities committed this week were part of a larger extremist network. 

Backlash against French Muslims

Meanwhile, many Muslims in the country fear a massive backlash.

"It's a very, very difficult time," Elsa Ray told CBC News on Saturday. She represents Collective Against Islamophobia in France. "And I am also afraid of the consequences on Muslims in France."

"We are shocked and sad about what happened," said Ray. "There has already been a lot of backlash against Muslims ... We have had many mosques attacked, one of them with a bomb."

Ray said there is also "a lot of physical and verbal abuse" against Muslims in France as well as "hate speech over the internet."

Ray implored all people to be "open-minded and to try to communicate with each other."

Jewish fears

However, the attack on the Jewish deli has also triggered fears among France's Jewish population, which numbers about half a million.

Attacks on synagogues and Jewish shops increased in the wake of last year's war in Gaza. The recent Paris attacks have only made the community more afraid.

“We have warned that the menace of rising anti-Semitism threatens French society at large," said a statement released yesterday by Simone Rodan-Benazquen, director of the American Jewish Committee’s Paris office. The group says 7,000 Jews left France for Israel last year — a record number.

Jewish community leader Roger Cukierman, urged French Jews to stay instead of joining a wave of emigration to Israel, saying "it's very important that there will remain a Jewish community in France."

He told The Associated Press, "we will go on exercising our Jewish lives, freely. Whatever our adversaries want to impose on us."

Far-right rise

Anand Memon, an expert on French politics and European integration at King's College London, told CBC News that France was already divided prior to the attacks.

"The far right National Party was polling well into 20 per cent even before this," he pointed out in an interview on Saturday.

"They have proposed a referendum on bringing back the death penalty [and] I think it will resonate with a lot of working-class voters who are frustrated at what they see as a weak response to Muslim extremism.

"There has ... always been tensions in French society. Many members of the Muslim community are part of the underclass who live in the suburbs of the big cities. There is real disillusionment among Muslim youth."