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UEFA president Michel Platini and Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger have sent messages of support to France in the wake of the terrorist attacks this week. Twelve people were killed in Wednesday's strike on the office of satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris, which had been threatened before for its caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. In the fallout from that incident, a policewoman was also shot in the capital on Thursday, before the main suspect in that killing and two brothers linked to the Charlie Hebdo strike were shot dead by French police as officers brought two further sieges to an end on Friday. Tributes have poured in from all over the world in recent days and Platini added his voice to them in a letter to the French Football Federation (FFF) president, Noel Le Graet. Platini said: "On behalf of the extensive European football family, I wish to express our sadness and solidarity with the sportsmen and women in France, as well as with the French people, who have been cruelly affected in what they hold most dear -- the universal values of human rights, which were expressed in France more than two centuries ago. "Today, those values can be summed up with the phrase: At UEFA, we are all Charlie." Wenger earlier expressed his hope that the attacks will not polarise the French population along religious or ethnic lines. "It is a dreadful and terrible situation," he said. "It is shocking. I think the whole country is shocked. France is a country with a freedom of speech, it has a big history and to think in a country like France you can die today because of your ideas and the way you want to speak is absolutely shocking. "I hope at the moment that the whole country is united and I hope it will not create a divided country, the consequences of that would be terrible." The Ligue 1 match between Lyon and Toulouse on Sunday has also been moved back by three hours to avoid a clash with national tributes to the victims of this week's Paris shootings. Paris Saint-Germain manager Laurent Blanc's press conference on Friday was preceded by a minute's silence and the manager added, according to lequipe.fr: "Solidarity is present everywhere today. "Footballers are people above all. They are not insensitive to what's happened. But life continues, work continues." All Ligue 1 matches this weekend will begin after a one-minute silence in memory of the victims of the Paris shootings.
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