(MENAFN- The Peninsula) French President Francois Hollande said yesterday that Muslims were the "main victims" of fanaticism, as funerals were held in Paris for five of the 17 people killed in last week's Islamist attacks.
Speaking at the Arab World Institute in Paris, Hollande said: "It is Muslims who are the main victims of fanaticism, fundamentalism and intolerance", adding the whole country was "united in the face of terrorism."
Meanwhile, at least two people were killed when Belgian counter-terrorist police raided an apartment used by suspected Islamist radicals yesterday, local media said, describing a coordinated, national operation related to last week's attacks
in Paris.
Members of the Muslim community in France, Europe's largest, have "the same rights and the same duties as all citizens" and must be "protected," Hollande vowed.
The five buried included two of Charlie Hebdo's best-known cartoonists and Franck Brinsolaro, 49, a police protection officer who was killed in the satirical magazine's editorial meeting.
Even as the ceremonies took place, the magazine continued to fly off the shelves, sparking fury in some parts of the Muslim world for depicting the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) on its cover.
Georges Wolinski, 80, and Bernard "Tignous" Verlhac, 57, who were gunned down by two Islamist brothers in the attack claimed by Al Qaeda, were buried at private family funerals.
Thousands braved drizzle outside the town hall memorial service for Tignous, laying flowers under a huge portrait of the cartoonist as his wife Chloe paid tribute inside.
His cartoon-covered coffin was carried through an applauding crowd for final burial, as people held aloft banners reading "Thank you Charlie Hebdo" and "Our heroes."
"It would really annoy you to see us here today with our long faces. We shouldn't be sad, but proud to have known you," said Coco, a fellow Charlie Hebdo cartoonist.
After the shooting at Charlie Hebdo, in which 12 people died, the French rushed to get their hands on the "survivors' issue" which sold out Wednesday before more copies of an eventual print run of five million hit newsstands.
Long queues formed again yesterday as copies were snapped up.
"Charlie Hebdo is alive and will live on," Hollande said Wednesday. "You can murder men and women, but you can never kill their ideas," he said, declaring the previously struggling
weekly "reborn". The Charlie Hebdo assault on January 7 was followed two days later by an attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris by a gunman claiming to have coordinated his actions with brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi.
In all, 17 people died over three days in the bloodiest attacks in France in half a century, which ended when police stormed two hostage sieges and killed all three gunmen. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve also announced that a Malian described as a "hero" after he helped hostages in the supermarket would be granted French citizenship.
The creator of "Je suis Charlie" told AFP yesterday he was seeking to copyright the slogan to stop the nearly uncontrollable flood of people seeking to profit from it.
Speaking at Tignous' funeral, Justice Minister Christiane Taubira said France was a country where "one can draw anything, including a prophet."
But the cover of the new Charlie Hebdo has sparked controversy and protests in some parts of the Muslim world, where many find the depiction of the Prophet (PBUH) highly offensive.
Al Qaeda's branch in Yemen, where at least one of the Kouachi brothers trained, released a video Wednesday claiming responsibility for the attack, saying it was "vengeance" for the cartoons of the Prophet (PBUH).
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