Charlie Hebdo publishes new issue, one week after attack

THE new edition of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has gone on sale, with a cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad on its cover.

Three million copies are being printed – a week after Islamist gunmen murdered eight journalists at the magazine and four other people in Paris.

The cartoon shows the Prophet weeping while holding a sign saying “Je suis Charlie” (“I am Charlie”).

It is believed earlier cartoons of the Prophet prompted the attack.

The slogan “Je suis Charlie” has been widely used following the shootings.

In a separate attack in Paris two days later, four Jewish men died after an Islamist gunmen took hostages at a kosher shop in the French capital. A police woman was shot dead in a third shooting believed to have been carried out by the same attacker.

Referring to last week’s shocking events, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said his country was at war with extremism and terrorism – but not with Muslims.

He was speaking on Tuesday after funeral ceremonies were held for seven of the victims in France and Israel.

France has deployed 10,000 troops at various sites across the country – including synagogues, mosques and airports – in response to the attacks.

Wednesday’s edition of Charlie Hebdo has an unprecedented print run of three million copies. Normally only 60,000 are sold each week.

There’s the full-page cartoon of a weeping Muhammad on the front cover, but inside there are no more caricatures of the Prophet.

There are plenty – in the paper’s characteristic scurrilous vein – of Muslim extremists. In one cartoon, two terrorists are seen ascending to heaven and asking: “Where are the 70 virgins?” In the background, the murdered staff at Charlie Hebdo are enjoying an orgy.

An editorial thanks the millions of people who have declared themselves as Charlie in the past few days – but it says it wants no more of the past insinuations that by provoking Muslims, it has somehow brought trouble on itself.

The issue will be available in six languages – including English, Arabic and Turkish – some in print and some online.

Editor-in-chief Gerard Biard told reporters: “We are happy to have done it and happy to have been able to do it, to have achieved it. It was tough. The front page… was complicated to put together, because it had to express something new, it had to say something relating to the event that we had to deal with.”

The front cover of the edition had been widely published in advance by French media.

Outside France, the Washington Post, Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine, Corriere della Sera in Italy and the UK’s Guardian are among publications to show the cartoon.

Very few outlets in the Middle East and North Africa have shown the image.

Charlie Hebdo’s decision to publish another cartoon of the Prophet has already generated threats from militant Islamist websites and criticism from the Islamic world, the BBC’s Chris Morris in Paris reports.

The three days of violence in Paris began after brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi attacked the magazine’s office. They shouted “We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad” after the shootin

The brothers were later killed by French security services after a stand-off in a town north of Paris.

Separately, Amedy Coulibaly – whom investigators have linked to the brothers – killed the four men at the kosher supermarket on Friday, apparently before police stormed the building. Coulibaly is also believed to have shot dead the policewoman the day before.

His partner Hayat Boumeddiene is now thought to be in Syria. She has been identified as a suspect by French police, although she left France before the attacks.