PARIS
Charlie Hebdo will go ahead with its weekly publication next Wednesday - and print one million copies, a lawyer for the satirical French newspaper has declared.
Richard Malka said on Thursday, a day after 12 people were massacred at the publication's Paris headquarters in a bloody gun attack, that one million copies of the edition would be produced instead of the normal 60,000 print run.
Patrick Pelloux, a Charlie Hebdo columnist, told France Inter radio: "We don’t want the newspaper to disappear … We will not stop.
"We will write it with our tears."
Philippe Val, the former director and editor of the publication, urged people to use laughter as the “ultimate weapon” against extremism and hate following the massacre of his friends and former colleagues.
'Dreadful slaughter'
He told France Inter: "Now is the time that we have to be grouped against this horror. Terror must not prevent the joy of living and freedom of expression.
"We have laughed so much, we must continue to laugh ... They have been murdered."
"This is a dreadful slaughter, and we can’t let silence take over; we must help ourselves. Right now we must join forces against this horror," he added.
Addressing journalists gathered to observe a minute of silence in support of the Charlie Hebdo victims in front of the magazine's offices, Francis Morel, CEO of Les Echos newspaper, said: "They wanted to kill Charlie.
"Not only they will not succeed, but we want Charlie Hebdo to emerge stronger from this tragedy."
Charlie Hebdo received financial aid from other media groups to print its special edition, which will comprise eight pages, instead of the regular 16, staff at the magazine said.
Suspects tracked
The declaration came a day after three masked armed men armed with Kalashnikov automatic rifles and a rocket-launcher attacked the magazine's offices, killing 12 people including two police officers and injuring about 10, five critically.
Two suspects - named by police as Franco-Algerians Said Kouachi, 34, and Cherif Kouachi, 32 - were being tracked on Thursday afternoon by military and police helicopters north of Paris.
Thousands of French citizens gathered in Paris' Place de La Republique, holding up pens and press cards in a symbolic act of defense for freedom of press late on Wednesday following the deadly attack.
About 5,000 people gathered in the French capital following calls from the France Journalists Syndicate and press freedom watchdog Journalists Without Borders.
A number of other rallies are also reportedly organized in cities across France including Angers, Bordeaux, Lyon and Strasbourg.
Charlie Hebdo sparked controversy in 2006 and 2012 for publishing comic cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, some of which had been first published by Danish magazine Jyllands-Posten in September 2005.
