Fire guts offices of French satirical magazine: police

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The offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which published a special Arab Spring edition on Wednesday with the prophet Mohammed as guest ‘editor’, were destroyed in a petrol bomb attack overnight, police said.

The fire at the magazine's offices started around 1:00 am (0200 GMT) and caused no injuries, a police source said.

Charlie Hebdo published a special edition on Wednesday to mark the Arab Spring, renaming the magazine Charia (Sharia) Hebdo for the occasion.

The cover showed a cartoon of the prophet stating: "100 lashes if you don't die of laughter!"

The depiction of the prophet is strictly prohibited in Islam.

A witness at the scene, Patrick Pelloux, told the media a molotov cocktail was hurled through the window and set fire to the computer system.

"Everything was destroyed," he said.

The magazine's publisher, known only as Charb, said he was convinced the fire was linked to the special edition.

"The police told us two people were seen leaving a bit of time before the fire was set off," he said.

"On Twitter, on Facebook, we received several letters of protest, threats, insults," which had been forwarded to the police, he said.

"Our problem now is to be able to put a paper out on next Wednesday," he said. "There is soot everywhere, the computers are in my opinion dead, the electrical system is melted."

"This is the first time we have been physically attacked, but we won't let it get to us," he said.

The weekly had said it would publish a special edition to ‘celebrate’ the Ennahda Islamist party's election victory in Tunisia and the transitional Libyan executive's announcement that Islamic Sharia law would be the country's main source of law.

It would feature the prophet Mohammed as guest ‘editor’, the magazine said.

Charb on Tuesday rejected accusations that he was trying to provoke.

"We feel we're just doing our job as usual. The only difference is that this week, Mohammed is on the cover and that's quite rare," he told the media.

A Paris court in 2007 threw out a suit brought by two Muslim organisations against Charlie Hebdo for reprinting cartoons of prophet Mohammed that had appeared in a Danish newspaper, sparking angry protests by Muslims worldwide.

The head of the French Council of the Muslim Faith, Mohammed Moussaoui, condemned that attack.

"If this was a criminal fire, we firmly condemn it," he told the media.

Jean-Francois Cope, the secretary general of the ruling UMP party, described the incident as an attack on free speech.

"We condemn in the strongest terms what is nothing more than an attack on a newspaper in a country that should personify freedom of expression," he said on Europe 1 radio.

"There should be no impunity, this is an act that must be followed by legal action," he said.