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Three armed men have attacked a French satirical magazine based in Paris, killing at least 12 people, including four cartoonists and two policemen, officials have said.
The lawyer of the magazine confirmed that four cartoonists working with the publication, including the publisher Stephane Charbonnier, known as “Charb”, were among the dead.
The cartoonists known as Cabu, Tignous and Wolinski were also killed in the attack, AFP quoted a judicial source as saying.
Charlie Hebdo has drawn repeated threats for its caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed, among other controversial sketches.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the assault was carried out by three attackers.
Al Jazeera’s Jacky Rowland said journalists and cartoonists reported several masked men dressed in black entering the building who then began to fire with automatic weapons.
“Some journalists took refuge on the roof,” Rowland said. “Charlie Hebdo has pushed boundaries in the past, and continues to challenge the idea of censorship.”
President Francois Hollande, speaking outside the office of the magazine, described the attack as having been carried out by barbaric people. “This is an attack on free speech,” he said. “No one can harm the spirit of this country which is this newspaper”.
Rowland said that a terrorism alert has been raised to its highest level in the wake of the attack.
The magazine had tweeted a cartoon of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, minutes before the attack.
France’s Muslim leadership sharply condemned the shooting as a “barbaric” attack and an assault on press freedom and democracy.
“This extremely grave barbaric action is also an attack against democracy and the freedom of the press,” the French Muslim Council (CFCM) said.
The body represents France’s Muslim community, which is Europe’s biggest and estimated to number between 3.5 million and five million people. – Al Jazeera.
Bongani Ndlovu
Online Reporter