France remembers Charlie Hebdo victims three years after Paris attacks

French President Emmanuel Macron laid a wreath in front of the former offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Sunday to mark three years of the start of the Paris attacks.

The ceremony was low-key, in keeping with requests from the families of the victims. Macron was joined by journalists from the magazine, members of his government, and the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo.

During a three-day killing spree in January 2015, gunmen killed Charlie Hebdo reporters and illustrators, police officers, and shoppers at a Jewish supermarket.

Eleven of Charlie Hebdo's employees were killed. Commemorations were also held Sunday at the site where a policeman was shot dead at point-blank range and at the Jewish supermarket.

Charlie Hebdo is a French satirical weekly newspaper. It is described as strongly secular and anti-religion, and tends to make fun of all groups. In photo: An old Jewish man pushes an old Muslim man, with both saying, 'You musn't make fun'.

In 2006, Islamic organisations sued the newspaper under French hate speech laws for its re-publication of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. The attempt was unsuccessful.

The newspaper has also published a number of caricatures of Muhammad, whose depiction is forbidden in Islam.