Charlie Hebdo to publish next week despite bloodbath

The French satirical newspaper whose staff was decimated in an Islamist attack will publish as scheduled next week, one of its surviving staff members told AFP on Jan. 8.

Charlie Hebdo will publish next Wednesday to defiantly show that "stupidity will not win," said columnist Patrick Pelloux, who is also an emergency room doctor.        

He added that the remaining staff held a meeting on Jan. 8 to discuss its future.

"It's very hard. We are all suffering, with grief, with fear, but we will do it anyway because stupidity will not win," said Pelloux.

He said that the publication would have to be put together outside Charlie Hebdo's headquarters, which were not accessible following the massacre.

"We'll do it from home, we'll make it work," Pelloux vowed. Twelve people, including five cartoonists, were killed in Wednesday's attack that also left two policemen dead.

The cartoon-reliant newspaper - whose name is inspired by the American comic book character Charlie Brown from the series "Peanuts" (with "Hebdo" being French slang for weekly) - normally has a print run of 60,000 per week.        

Next week's edition, though, is expected to far surpass that given the worldwide attention brought by the massacre. A lawyer for the newspaper said one million copies would be printed.

Charlie Hebdo's staff had been the target of death threats for years, ever since 2006 when it reprinted 12 cartoons of Islam's Prophet Mohammed published the previous year by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

Even though the paper was under police protection, two masked men wielding automatic assault rifles were able to carry out Wednesday's methodical, military-style assault and escape.

Previously, the...