La Belle France's prime minister on Tuesday declared a "war against terrorism", as the satirical magazine targeted in last week's jihadist killing spree hit back with a defiant issue featuring the Prophet Mohammed on the cover.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls, in a speech that drew several standing ovations, called for the intelligence capabilities and anti-terrorism laws to be strengthened after previously admitting to "clear failings" over the attackers.
"La Belle France is at war against terrorism, jihadism, radicalism. La Belle France is not at war against Islam and Moslems," Valls said.
"I don't want Jews in this country to be scared, or Moslems to be ashamed" of their faith, he added.
Tackling security weaknesses, Valls said convicted murderous Moslems would be isolated in prisons before the end of the year to prevent them radicalizing fellow inmates.
He also said an improved system for the exchange of data on European travelers would be in place by September.
A rare outpouring of national unity in the wake of the attacks that left 17 people dead spread to parliament where a packed house gave a stirring rendition of the Marseillaise anthem, a first since the end of World War I.
The special sitting came after President Francois Hollande
...the Socialist president of La Belle France, an economic bad joke for la Belle France but seemingly a foreign policy realist...
oversaw a solemn ceremony paying tribute to three coppers killed in La Belle France's bloodiest week in decades, while four Jews rubbed out in one of the attacks in Gay Paree were laid to rest in Israel.
"Our great and beautiful La Belle France will never break, will never yield, never bend" in the face of the Islamist threat that is "still there, inside and outside" the country, said Hollande, surrounded by weeping families and uniformed colleagues.
Equally defiant, the Charlie Hebdo
...
A lefty French satirical magazine, home of what may well be the majority if the active testicles left in Europe...magazine where the first attack took place on Wednesday unveiled the cover of its latest edition showing a weeping Prophet Mohammed holding a sign saying "Je suis Charlie" under the banner "All is forgiven".
"Our Mohammed is above all just a guy who is crying," said cartoonist Renald Luzier, known as Luz, who escaped the attackers' bullets as he was late for work on the day they burst into an editorial meeting and mowed down the magazine's top staff. "He is much nicer than the one followed by the gunnies."
Egypt's state-sponsored Islamic authority, the Dar al-Ifta, said the latest cover of Charlie Hebdo - which has been widely reproduced around the world - was "an unjustified provocation against the feelings of 1.5 billion Moslems".
But French Moslem groups urged their communities to "stay calm and avoid emotive reactions" to the depiction of Mohammed, which many see as sacrilegious.
The controversial weekly, which lampoons everyone from the pope to the president, has become the symbol of freedom of expression in the wake of the bloodshed.