Armistice Day: Remembrance events around world mark end of WW1

Commemorations are taking place around the world to mark the centenary of the Armistice that ended World War One.

In Australia, a ceremony was held at the National War Memorial in Canberra, while in Adelaide an aircraft dropped thousands of red paper poppies.

In New Zealand, a gun salute took place in the capital, Wellington.

And in India, memorials were held for the 74,000 troops who died fighting on the other side of the world. The main European ceremony will be in Paris.

US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are among those set to attend a service beneath the Arc de Triomphe.

Meanwhile in the UK, a series of special events are being held to mark the end of the 1914-18 conflict.

For the first time, members of the public chosen by ballot will pay their respects at the national memorial in Whitehall, central London.

‘Learn from the past… for our children’

During his speech in Canberra, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison spoke of the importance of remembrance, saying people need “to learn from the past so that we can better navigate the changing currents of our own times, for our own children, and for the next generations”.

Australian and New Zealand forces sustained huge loss of life in the 1915 Gallipoli campaign.

In New Zealand, the traditional two minutes of silence at 11:00 were followed by a 100-gun salute on the Wellington waterfront, while church bells rang across the country. Cars and ships blared their horns and emergency services sounded their sirens.

“The carillon and roaring chorus has recaptured the wave of spontaneous jubilation and hope which swept New Zealand when news of the Armistice broke,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told crowds at the National War Memorial in Wellington.

In India, where 1.3 million troops from the former British colony joined the allied war effort, a Scottish piper played at the Delhi War Cemetery. The poppies that have become a poignant emblem of the bloodshed in Europe lay mingled with bright, symbolic marigolds.

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“This was a war in which India was not directly involved, yet our soldiers fought world-over, just for the cause of peace,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted on Sunday.

World leaders meet in Paris

The focus will switch to Europe later on Sunday, where about 70 world leaders are gathering in Paris for remembrance events.

French President Emmanuel Macron will lead the main event of the centenary – a sombre commemoration at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, a memorial to France’s fallen under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

Sunday afternoon will see Mr Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel attend a peace conference – the Paris Peace Forum – with leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

On Saturday, Mr Macron and Mrs Merkel visited the town of Compiègne in northern France. They signed a book of remembrance in a railway carriage identical to the one in which the 1918 Armistice was sealed.

President Trump, however, caused controversy by cancelling a trip to a cemetery for the war dead because of bad weather.

A group of around 50 activist organisations plan to hold a demonstration in Paris later on Sunday in protest against the US leader’s visit.