The first issue of Charlie Hebdo since the terrorist attack on the French satirical newspaper’s offices in Paris went on sale and reportedly sold out at newspaper kiosks within minutes.
An eventual 3 million copies will be printed, however, the first published was 500,000 issues. Another 500,000 issues are scheduled to be published Wednesday. A typical print run for the weekly is 60,000 issues, Fox News reported.
Charlie Hebdo’s latest issue has been flying off the shelves at newsstands across Paris amid backlash from Islamic leaders who have objected to the cover’s depiction of the Prophet Muhammad. Sky News reported that lines to buy the magazine began to form at 6 a.m. local time (midnight Eastern) and some newsstands had sold out of copies of the highly anticipated new Charlie Hebdo magazine by 8 a.m.
The Associated Press reported that a newsstand off Champs Elysee in Paris had sold out at 6:05 a.m., five minutes after they had opened their newsstand for the day. At Saint-Lazare, people broke into a scuffle after they realized there weren’t enough copies to go around. One woman said that she had “never seen anything like it,” as all 450 copies she had “were sold out in 15 minutes.”
It was incredible. I had a queue of 60-70 people waiting for me when I opened […] I’ve never seen anything like it. All my 450 copies were sold out in 15 minutes.
Sky News correspondent Robert Nisbet reported that a newsstand located outside the Gare de l’Est railway station opened with 75 copies but “they all went.”
They all went, they’re waiting for more […] You can’t get a copy inside the Gare de l’Est railway station at all, such is the demand not just here, but all around the world.
A van driver delivering copies, Jean-Baptiste Saidi, told the Associated Press that distributing Charlie Hebdo “warms my heart because we say to ourselves that he is still here, he’s never left,” BBC reported.
The Daily Telegraph and Sky News both reported that some copies of the magazine had already been listed on eBay, with one seller asking $775 (511 pounds) for a single copy.
Wednesday marked the one-week anniversary of the deadly terror attack on the magazine’s offices in which twelve people were killed, including eight members of the staff. Amongst them was the magazine’s editor and four staff cartoonists.
Survivors of the Charlie Hebdo attack worked out of offices which they borrowed from left-wing daily Liberation in order to produce Wednesday’s issue, which they began production of a mere two days after their colleagues were murdered by two brothers, Said and Cherif Kouachi. The brothers, who were killed by police in a hostage raid, claimed to be members of Al Qaeda.
The Guardian reported that some outlets had sold hundreds of copies of the magazine to “customers eager to show support for free speech in the wake of the attack” within the first few minutes of going on sale.
What do you think of the latest issue of Charlie Hebdo’s cover which depicts an image of the Prophet Muhammad?
