France has read aloud the names of the people killed in the Nov. 13 Paris attacks in a somber remembrance service honouring them on Friday.
President Francois Hollande sat alone on a single chair in the Invalides courtyard with hundreds of mourners, many relatives of those who died, sitting behind him as well as some of the people injured in the attacks and members of the emergency services.
After the military honors had been paid, a young cellist played a mournful J.S. Bach Sarabande and a trio of female singers performed a song by Jacques Brel.
VIDÉO Interprétation de Sarabande de la suite n°2 de Bach, par Edgar Moreau https://t.co/hZ0t6eJKpG #HommageNationalhttps://t.co/Eqv736GLJu— LCP (@LCPan) November 27, 2015
After the musical tributes, Hollande addressed families of the victims.
"They represented life and it was because they represented life that they were killed," he told them, adding that the nation is in mourning.
To the hundreds wounded in the attacks, many at the Bataclan concert hall where they were attending an Eagles of Death Metal concert, he said the country would be there for them.
"So many people have been wounded and they will be marked forever in their flesh," Hollande said.
"France will be by your side... and after having buried the dead we will have to repair those who are alive."
On the day of mourning, when he said the whole country was crying for the victims, Hollande also restated his pledge to destroy the "army of fanatics" responsible.
"France will act in order to protect its children," he said in his 20-minute address.
"The terrorists want to divide us, to oppose us, to pit us against one another. They will fail. They have the cult of death, we have the love of life."
The memorial, which comes two weeks after the attacks, is the first formal gathering since Islamic extremist gunmen and suicide bombers attacked the national stadium and central Paris.
Additional reporting by The Associated Press.