Thousands protest against Charlie Hebdo

Thousands of people marched through city on Thursday in the country's biggest protest yet against French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo for publishing cartoons. The march through the streets is the biggest in a series of demonstrations against the magazine. An intelligence official overseeing the rally told AFP that the protesters numbered in the "thousands", still a relatively small turnout in a city of 18 million people.
Protesters carried green flags and chanted anti-Charlie Hebdo slogans as they marched. "Down with Charlie Hebdo, down with the blasphemers," they shouted. Many carried placards demanding blasphemers be killed. One of the protest leaders, Sarwat Ejaz Qadri, demanded the government cut diplomatic ties with France. "Their ambassador should be declared persona non grata and must be expelled from the country," Qadri said. In Quetta, some 400 activists of Markazi Jamiat-e-Ahl-e-Hadith held a demonstration in front of the press club and burned a French flag. The demonstrators, many of them children, carried placards condemning the satirical magazine and shouted slogans including: "Let blasphemers be hanged, we will not tolerate anyone ridiculing our prophet."