French President Francois Hollande warned against succumbing to racial or religious prejudices as some of the murdered journalists from the Charlie Hebdo magazine were laid to rest yesterday.

Any anti-Muslim or anti-semitic crimes would be “severely punished,” he said.

With the death toll from last week’s wave of attacks totalling 20 and 120,000 security forces now crawling the nation’s streets, tensions have remained high.

Another attack had been feared when a car careened into a policewoman outside the presidential palace before investigators concluded that it was probably an accident.

Mr Hollande pointed out that the vast majority of victims of Islamist extremism worldwide are Muslim.

“In the face of terrorism, we are all united,” he said.

Despite claims by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula that it masterminded and funded last week’s killings, French police now believe the attackers were “inspired but not supervised” by the terror group and were “home-grown” terrorists.