Paris attacks: Europe mourns 'fallen friends', world leaders honour victims

Paris: In Europe, one of the biggest rallies was in Berlin, where 18,000 people marched wearing t-shirts saying "Checkpoint Charlie Hebdo" -- a reference to the Cold War-era Checkpoint Charlie in the once-divided German city. The march comes days after Germany's new anti-Islamic Pegida movement drew 35,000 people into the streets of Dresden.

In Brussels, Belgian cartoonist Philippe Geluck was among a crowd of 20,000, saying he was marching "in honor of my fallen friends" at Charlie Hebdo. "I know the Muslim community feels wounded and humiliated by these cartoons, but they were not taking aim at Islam but at fundamentalism," he said. Gunmen killed 12 people in an attack on the magazine, which printed cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that infuriated some Muslims. A third gunman killed a policewoman and four people at a Paris kosher supermarket.

London's Trafalgar Square was filled with around 2,000 people raising pencils to the sky and the iconic Tower Bridge was illuminated in the red white and blue of the French flag. Scores of people also rallied in the university city of Oxford. The British capital experienced its own terror nightmare 10 years ago when suicide bombers blew up three underground trains and a bus, killing 52 people on July 7, 2005. In Madrid's Puerta de Sol, hundreds descended on the streets with blue, white and red French flags, and sang "La Marseillaise."

Hundreds of Muslims also gathered at Madrid's Atocha station, scene of Spain's worst terror attack, the March 11, 2004 train bombings that saw Al-Qaeda-inspired bombers kill 191 people. Veiled women with young children joined groups of young men at the rally, holding up signs that read "I am Muslim and I am not a terrorist."

"We don't want killings carried out in the name of Islam," said 30-year-old Driss Bouzdoudou, who has lived in Spain for 14 years.