Niger churches torched in Charlie Hebdo protests

At least five people have been killed and six churches attacked amid protests in Niger against French magazine Charlie Hebdo’s recent cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed.

Protests began outside the grand mosque in the Nigerien capital of Niamey where hundreds of demonstrators gathered, shouting ‘God is great’ in Arabic.

At least six churches were torched or looted in Niamey and regional towns. Bars, hotels and businesses under non-Muslim ownership were also targeted.

Two charred bodies were recovered from a church in the vicinity of Niamey, and the body of a woman was found in a bar, Reuters reported.

"I just rushed and told my colleagues in the church to take away their families from the place," Pastor Zakaria Jadi told the BBC. "I took my family to take them out from the place. When I came back I just discovered that everything has gone. There's nothing in my house and also in the church."

Niger's president, one of six African heads of state who attended a recent unity march in Paris, condemned the violence as anti-Islamic.

"Those who loot these places of worship, who desecrate them and kill their Christian compatriots... have understood nothing of Islam," Mahamadou Issoufou said.

Earlier this month, Islamist gunmen killed 12 people at the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

The cover of the magazine's latest edition, published after the attack, featured a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad weeping while holding a sign saying "I am Charlie".

Distributors announced on Saturday that seven million copies of the edition are being printed in view of extraordinary demand. The magazine's print run before the attack was 60,000.

During a demonstration in the Nigerien city of Zinder on Friday, protesters raided Christian-run shops and attacked the French cultural centre. The death toll in the city rose to five when emergency services located a burned body inside a Catholic Church.

Protests against the Charlie Hebdo cartoon were also seen on Friday in Pakistan the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, and the Algerian capital of Algiers. People in Somalia also took to the streets on Saturday.