Charlie Hebdo remembers attacks anniversary with bloody, armed God

The bearded man has the weapon slung over the back of his shoulder as the cover reads “L’Assassin court toujours” which is translated as “The assassin is always out there”.

The special edition will include a collection of cartoons by the five slain artists.

“We feel terribly alone. We hoped that others would do satire too”, financial director Eric Portheault, who survived the attack, told The Guardian.

“No one wants to join us in this fight because it’s risky”.

An editorial, released before publication on Wednesday, said the magazine would continue despite religious extremists who wanted to muzzle it. “They won’t be the ones to see Charlie die – Charlie will see them kick the bucket”, it declared.

But Charlie Hebdo’s special edition this week, with a front-page caricature of a bloody God wielding an assault rifle, darkly predicts that more violence is to come. One staffer went downstairs to fetch her daughter from daycare, and the brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi called out her pen name upon seeing her: “Coco”.

The special edition is due to be printed in one million copies and expected to be in great demand. The weekly had sales of 30,000 which reportedly rose to 7.5m for the first episode following the attack.

Its brand of provocative, no-holds-barred humour appeared to have gone out of fashion.

Le Monde described the attack, which was claimed by Al-Qaeda’s branch in the Arabian Peninsula as revenge for Charlie’s cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, as “France’s 9/11”. It followed a 2011 firebombing of its offices that forced the publication to move premises.

After killing 11 and injuring a further 11 people inside the building, the gunmen shot dead a French National Police officer outside.

Seventeen people died at Charlie Hebdo and at a kosher supermarket two days later. On Jan. 7, 2015, gunmen stormed the magazine’s offices and killed 12 people including eight of its staff.

Finally on Sunday the public are invited to take part in a homage to the victims of the attacks at Place de la Republique, which was the centre of the huge march on the Sunday following the January attacks and was once again the focal point for tributes to the victims of the November attacks.

Only families of the victims and government officials will attend the unveiling ceremonies.