Baku-APA. The first edition of Charlie Hebdo after an attack by Islamist gunmen sold out within minutes on Wednesday, featuring a cartoon of a tearful Prophet Mohammad on a cover that defenders called a moving work of art but critics saw as a new provocation, APA reports quoting Reuters.
French readers queued up at dawn for copies to show support for the newspaper, even as al Qaeda's branch in Yemen claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it ordered the killings because it deemed the weekly had insulted the Prophet.
Across the Middle East, Muslim leaders who have denounced the attack on the newspaper called for calm, while criticizing its decision to publish a fresh caricature of Mohammad.
Millions of copies of the "survivors' edition" were printed in France, dwarfing the normal print run of 60,000. On the cover, a tearful Muhammad carried a sign reading "Je suis Charlie," below the headline "All is forgiven."
Inside, the weekly's irreverent humor was on full display. One cartoon showed jihadists saying: "We shouldn't touch Charlie people ... otherwise they will look like martyrs and, once in heaven, these bastards will steal our virgins."
"What makes us laugh most is that the bells of Notre-Dame rang in our honor," read an editorial in the newspaper, which emerged from the 1968 counter-culture movement and has long mocked all religions and pillars of the establishment.
David Sullo, standing at the end of a line of two dozen people at a kiosk in central Paris for a copy, said it would be the first time he had ever bought it.
"It's not quite my political stripes, but it's important for me to buy it today and support freedom of expression."
A few streets away, a newspaper seller said people were already waiting outside her shop when she opened at 6:00 am (0000 am ET).
Prime Minister Manuel Valls, himself a frequent target of the weekly's caricatures, was seen leaving the government's weekly cabinet meeting with a copy tucked under his arm.
"BATTLE OF PARIS"
Two Islamist gunmen killed 12 people in an attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo on Jan. 7. A third gunman later killed a policewoman and seized a kosher supermarket, killing four civilians. All three attackers were killed in police raids.
In a video posted on YouTube, Al Qaeda's Yemen branch said its leadership had ordered last Wednesday's attack.
"As for the blessed Battle of Paris, we, the Organization of al Qaeda al Jihad in the Arabian Peninsula, claim responsibility for this operation as vengeance for the Messenger of God," said Nasser bin Ali al-Ansi, the main ideologue of the group in Yemen.
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