Hundreds of people marched in southern Afghanistan praising the two gunmen who killed 12 people at the French weekly Charlie Hebdo, Afghan officials said today.
The demonstration in Chora district in the insurgency-hit Uruzgan province followed Friday prayers at a local mosque where the prayer leader Zain-Ul-Haq asked worshippers to rally in support of the two French attackers, according to one of the protesters who talked to AFP.
"The demonstrators were praising the attackers for killing the cartoonists," Dost Mohammad Nayaab, the spokesman for the provincial governor, told AFP.
The demonstrators also lashed out at Afghan President Ashraf Ghani who on Thursday condemned the deadly attack on the French satirical magazine, Nayaab said.
"We demanded President Ashraf Ghani to withdraw his condemnation of the attack," said one of the participants.
In his statement, Ghani had said, "Killing of defenceless people and civilians is a heinous act of terror, there is no justification for this heinous act".
