DHAKA: A stunned and outraged France began a national day of mourning on Thursday, as security forces desperately hunted two brothers suspected of gunning down 12 people in an Islamist assault on a satirical weekly, the country’s bloodiest attack in half a century.

The massacre triggered poignant and spontaneous demonstrations of solidarity around the world, with outraged people rallying in their tens of thousands under the banner ‘I am Charlie’, in support of press freedom and the controversial ‘Charlie Hebdo’ magazine.

Declaring a national day of mourning - only the fifth in the last 50 years – France president Francois Hollande called the bloodbath ‘an act of exceptional barbarity’ and ‘undoubtedly a terrorist attack’.

Hollande ordered flags to fly at half-mast for three days in France and was due to convene an emergency Cabinet meeting at 8.30am.

A minute’s silence will be observed across the country at midday, after which the bells of Paris’s famous Notre Dame cathedral will sound out across the capital.

‘Nothing can divide us, nothing should separate us. Freedom will always be stronger than barbarity,’ said the president, calling for ‘national unity’.

BDST: 1307 HRS, JAN 08, 2015