­­Charlie Hebdo’s first issue since an attack by Islamist gunmen sold out within minutes yesterday. It features a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad on a cover that defenders praised as art but critics saw as a new provocation.

French readers queued at dawn for copies to support the satirical newspaper, even as al-Qaeda’s branch in Yemen claimed responsibility for the attack last week, saying it ordered the killings because it deemed the weekly had insulted the Prophet.

Across the Middle East, Muslim leaders who have denounced the attack in which 12 people died called for calm, while criticising Charlie Hebdo’s decision to publish a fresh caricature of Mohammad.

President Francois Hollande visited France’s Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean and said it was ready to support military operations against Islamic State in Iraq “in close cooperation with coalition forces”.

Court in Turkey in favour of blocking websites that ran ‘prophet’ cover

Also yesterday, the Interior Ministry said over 50 cases of people voicing support for terrorism had been registered since the attack on Charlie Hebdo’s Paris office and the subsequent killings of a policewoman and four people at a Jewish supermarket.

Millions of copies of the “survivors’ edition” were printed, dwarfing the usual 60,000 print run. On its cover, a tearful Muhammad holds a “Je suis Charlie” sign under the words “All is forgiven.”

Inside the latest edition, one cartoon showed jihadists saying: “We shouldn’t touch Charlie people... otherwise they will look like martyrs and, once in heaven, these bastards will steal our virgins.”

This week’s edition underlined the irony of how the victims had been commemorated at Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris.

“What makes us laugh most is that the bells of Notre-Dame rang in our honour,” read an editorial in the newspaper, which emerged from the 1968 counter-culture movement and has long mocked all religions and pillars of the establishment.

A man standing at the end of a queue at a central Paris kiosk said he’d never bought it before: “It’s not quite my political stripes, but it’s important for me to buy it today and support freedom of expression.”

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls holds a copy of Charlie Hebdo as he leaves the weekly cabinet meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris, yesterday. Photos: Reuters

Prime Minister Manuel Valls left a Cabinet meeting with a copy tucked under his arm.

Defenders praised the cover for upholding the newspaper’s satirical mission, proclaiming its right to free speech while maintaining a mournful tone and a peaceful message.

Jonathan Jones, art critic for Britain’s Guardian newspaper, called the cover “a life-affirming work of art”. Belgium’s Le Soir wrote: “Not publishing the edition would have been like a second death for the victims.”

Several German newspapers reprinted the new cover. It filled the back page of the top-selling Bild daily, whose columnist Franz Josef Wagner praised it highly: “It is sarcasm, it is biting ridicule ... they are mocking the murderers,” he wrote.

In the Middle East, it was branded a new provocation that could create a backlash. Publishing the cartoons “shows contempt” for Muslim feelings, said the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestinian lands, Mohammed Hussein.

Iran’s foreign minister Mohammad Jawad Zarif said serious dialogue with the West would be easier if it respected Muslim sensitivities.

A court in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir ruled in favour of blocking four websites that ran the cover.