THE French satirical newspaper whose staff was decimated in an Islamist attack will come out as scheduled next week, one of its surviving staffers told news agencies on Thursday.
‘Charlie Hebdo’ will hit shelves next Wednesday to defiantly show that “stupidity will not win,” said columnist Patrick Pelloux, adding that the remaining staff will soon meet.
“It’s very hard. We are all suffering, with grief, with fear, but we will do it anyway because stupidity will not win,” he said.
He added that the publication would have to be put together outside Charlie Hebdo’s headquarters which were not accessible following the massacre.
Twelve people, including five cartoonists, were killed in Wednesday’s attack that also left two policemen dead.
Seven people have been detained in the hunt for brothers suspected of gunning down 12 people in an Islamist assault on a satirical weekly, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Thursday.
The masked, black-clad gunmen burst into the offices of the Charlie Hebdo magazine on Wednesday morning, killing some of France’s most outspoken journalists and two policemen, before jumping into a car and escaping.
They are still on the run, and authorities have warned they are “armed and dangerous.”
“Seven people,” Cazeneuve said on French radio when asked how many people were currently being held and questioned over the attack—the bloodiest in France in half a century.
A judicial source, who refused to be named, added that those who were being questioned are men and women who are close to the suspects, without saying where they had been detained.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls meanwhile told RTL radio that the two suspects were known to intelligence services and were “no doubt” being followed before Wednesday’s attack.
They have been identified as Cherif Kouachi, 32, a known jihadist convicted in 2008 for involvement in a network sending fighters to Iraq, and his 34-year-old brother Said. Both were born in Paris.
The massacre, the country’s bloodiest attack in half a century, triggered poignant and spontaneous demonstrations of solidarity around the world.
Shocked people from Moscow to Washington rallied in their tens of thousands under the banner “I am Charlie”, in support of press freedom and the controversial Charlie Hebdo magazine that has repeatedly lampooned the Prophet Mohammed.
Declaring Thursday a national day of mourning—only the fifth in the last 50 years—President Francois Hollande called the bloodbath “an act of exceptional barbarity” and “undoubtedly a terrorist attack”.
Nearly 24 hours after the brazen daylight assault, the masked, black-clad gunmen—who shouted “Allahu akbar” (“God is greatest”) while killing some of France’s most outspoken journalists as well as two policemen—were still on the loose.
The frantic manhunt stretched into the night with search-and-seizure operations in Strasbourg and towns near Paris, while in northeastern Reims, police commandos raided a building later scoured by white-clad forensic police.
Hamyd Mourad, an 18-year-old suspected of being an accomplice in the attack, handed himself in, with police sources saying he had seen his name “circulating on social media”.
Hollande ordered flags to fly at half-mast for three days in France and was due to convene an emergency cabinet meeting at 8:30 am (0730 GMT).
A minute’s silence will be observed across the country at midday, after which the bells of Paris’s famous Notre Dame cathedral will sound out across the capital.
“Nothing can divide us, nothing should separate us. Freedom will always be stronger than barbarity,” said the president, calling for “national unity.”
Even before the attack, France, home to Europe’s biggest Muslim population, was on high alert like many countries that have seen citizens leave to fight alongside the radical Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.
“Several terrorist attacks had been foiled in recent weeks,” Hollande said.
At around 11:30 am on Wednesday, the killers stormed the central Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo during an editorial meeting and picked off some of France’s best-known cartoonists in cold, military-style executions.
Outside the building, chilling amateur video footage showed the attackers calmly approaching a wounded policeman as he lay on the pavement and then shooting him at close range.
Many witnesses said the scene was “like a movie” and some described “rivers of blood” flowing in the streets of the City of Light.
One witness said: “I saw them leaving and shooting. They were wearing masks. These guys were serious.
“At first I thought it was special forces chasing drug traffickers or something,” said the man, who declined to give his name.
The attack stunned local residents. (AFP)
