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French Republican guards stand during a ceremony at Place de la République on Sunday to pay tribute to victims of last year’s extremist violence.Reuters

French President François Hollande and other dignitaries held a special ceremony Sunday to honour all those killed in Islamic extremist violence around Paris in 2015 – a year when the European way of life was targeted time and again with deadly consequences.

At least one attacker is at large, and France's top security official acknowledged Sunday that authorities don't know his whereabouts. The country is under a state of emergency after attacks in Paris on Nov. 13. Paris was again jolted Thursday when a man wearing a fake explosives vest and wielding a butcher's knife ran up to a police station and was shot to death by officers standing guard.

Mr. Hollande and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo unveiled a plaque Sunday in memory of victims targeted at satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, a kosher market, a rock concert, cafés, a stadium and elsewhere. The violence left some 150 victims dead, and several attackers were also killed.

The ceremony took place at Place de la République, a plaza that has become a symbol of Parisians' solidarity since the attacks, which began Jan. 7, 2015, with the Charlie Hebdo attack.

"To the victims of the terrorist attacks in January and November. … In this place, the people of France pay their respect," read the plaque under a newly planted memorial oak tree on the huge square that was the focal point of a march last January attended by dozens of world leaders walking arm in arm.

Veteran French rock star Johnny Hallyday, accompanied only by a guitar, sang a song about the march, which brought out the biggest crowds in Paris since the liberation of Paris from Nazi Germany in 1944.

The French army choir sang late Belgian singer Jacques Brel's Les prénoms de Paris (The First Names of Paris) and Le temps des cerises, a song associated with the socialist Paris commune movement in 1871, while two young actors read a speech by 19th-century writer Victor Hugo.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve called for national unity and insisted the government is doing all it can to protect France.

Many questions remain about the Nov. 13 attacks, including how many people were involved and may still be at large.

Mr. Cazeneuve said on i-Tele television Sunday that "We don't know where Salah Abdeslam is," referring to a fugitive gunman. Mr. Abdeslam crossed into Belgium Nov. 14 and Belgian authorities believe he hid out in a Brussels-area apartment used to make bombs for the Paris attacks before moving on.

Meanwhile, acting on "concrete evidence" from French security authorities, German police on Saturday raided an apartment at a shelter for asylum-seekers in the western German city of Recklinghausen that they say had been occupied by the man who was killed by French police in Thursday's incident outside a Paris police station.

North Rhine-Westphalia state police chief Uwe Jacob described the suspect as a small-time criminal known to authorities by several aliases, who had a record that included weapons charges, drug trafficking and causing bodily harm and had spent at least a month in jail.

He said there are no indications the man was part of an extremist network, but that a self-drawn Islamic State flag was found in his room, the dpa news agency reported.

At a news conference in Duesseldorf, Mr. Jacob told reporters that the man had first entered Germany in 2013 after living for five years illegally in France, and had gone by at least seven names, identifying himself as a Tunisian, Moroccan and Georgian. He lived in several German cities and moved to Recklinghausen at the beginning of last August.

Mr. Cazeneuve said in remarks Sunday that the man was also believed to have lived in Luxembourg and Switzerland. French investigators were still trying to determine the man's identity.

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