Charlie Hebdo special anniversary edition goes on sale

A special edition of the Charlie Hebdo magazine has gone on sale, commemorating a year since the attack by Islamist militants on its offices.

A million copies were released in France on Wednesday, with the cover of the French satirical weekly reading: "One year later, the assassin is still on the run".

It features a bearded caricature with a gun slung over his shoulder and blood on his clothes, said to represent a God.

This 32-page copy accuses Islamic fundamentalists, organised religion, an irresolute government and intelligence failures for the 2015 violence in France by Muslim extremists.

The special edition marks a year since brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi attacked the magazine's officers in eastern Paris and killed 12 people, including eight staff.

The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano criticised the magazine for depicting God as a Kalashnikov-carrying killer, saying it was "woeful" and disrespectful to true believers of all faiths.

The controversial weekly is known for its satirical covers.

Laurent Sourisseau, the newspaper's director who goes by the name Riss, drew this edition's cover and wrote an editorial detailing the horror he survived.

He described the newsroom's silence moments after the two gunmen opened fire, saying that was how he knew his colleagues were dead.

He insisted that the newspaper would remain alive and said: "Never have we wanted so much to break the faces of those who dreamed of our deaths".