Charlie Hebdo sells out before dawn, with Muhammad on cover
3 million copies of the French satirical magazine, who lost 10 of its staffers in a terror attack, sell out around Paris.
Charlie Hebdo's defiant new issue sold out before dawn around Paris on Wednesday, with scuffles at kiosks over dwindling copies of the paper fronting the Prophet Muhammad. In the city still shaken by the deaths of 17 people at the hands of Islamic extremists, a controversial comic who appeared to be praising the men was taken into custody.
The core of the irreverent newspaper's staff perished a week ago when Islamist extremists stormed its offices, killing 12. Those who survived put out the issue that appeared on newsstands Wednesday, working out of borrowed offices, with a print run of 3 million - more than 50 times the usual circulation.
After the paper sold out, the magazine announced it would increase its distribution to 5 million copies in order to meet demand.
One newsstand just off Paris' Champs Elysee sold out at 6:05am - five minutes after opening. At Saint-Lazare, people hoping to buy a copy scuffled when they realized there weren't enough to go around.
The storming of the newspaper was the opening salvo of three days of terror and bloodshed in the Paris region, ending when security forces killed all three gunmen on Friday.
France's government was preparing tougher anti-terrorism measures, and there were growing signs that authorities were ready to use current laws to their fullest extent. Wednesday's detention of Dieudonne for defending terrorism followed a four-year prison sentence involving the same charge for a man in northern France who seemed to defend the attacks in a drunken rant while resisting arrest.
French police say as many as six members of a terrorist cell that carried out the Paris attacks may still be at large, including a man seen driving a car registered to the widow of one of the gunmen. The country has deployed 10,000 troops to protect sensitive sites, including Jewish schools and synagogues, mosques and travel hubs.
Dieudonne, who popularized an arm gesture that resembles a Nazi salute and who has been convicted repeatedly of racism and anti-Semitism, is no stranger to controversy. His provocative performances were banned last year but he has a core following among many of France's disaffected young people.
His Facebook post, which was swiftly deleted, said he felt like "Charlie Coulibaly" - merging the names of Charlie Hebdo and Amedy Coulibaly, the gunman who seized a kosher market and killed four hostages, along with a policewoman.
Solidarity for Charlie Hebdo, although not uniform, was widespread in France and abroad.
In Turkey, police stopped trucks as they left its printing center to check the paper's content after it decided to print a selection of Charlie Hebdo caricatures.
The pro-secular Cumhuriyet newspaper said police allowed distribution of the newspaper to proceed after verifying that the satirical French newspaper's controversial cover featuring the Prophet Muhammad was not published.
The paper printed a four-page selection of cartoons and articles on Wednesday in a show of solidarity with Charlie hebdo but omitted religiously sensitive cartoons.
Police intensified security outside Cumhuriyet's headquarter and printing center as a precaution.
The state-run Anadolu Agency said a few pro-Islamic students staged a protest outside the paper's office in Ankara denouncing its decision to print Charlie Hebdo cartoons.
