A cartoonist who designed the cover image of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, said he is leaving the publication, media reported on Tuesday.
>The magazine’s office in Paris was attacked on January 7 . The two Islamaist attackers — Cherif and Said Kouachi — killed at least 12 people, including its chief editor.
> Read Editorial: The attack on Charlie Hebdo
Cartoonist Renald Luzier, fondly known as Luz, told the French newspaper Liberation on Monday that his job had become “too much to bear” following the deaths of his colleagues, BBC reported.
Within days of the attack, the satirical magazine’s surviving staff produced an edition with the headline “All is forgiven” above Luz’s cartoon of Muhammad holding a sign saying “Je suis Charlie”.
> Prophet Mohammed back on Charlie Hebdo cover
“Each issue is torture because the others are gone,” Mr. Luz said.
He joined the publication in 1992 and said his resignation was “a very personal choice”. He will leave in September.
“Spending sleepless nights summoning the dead, wondering what Charb, Cabu, Honore, Tignous would have done is exhausting,” he added.
Last month, Mr. Luz announced he would stop drawing images of the Prophet, as it no longer interested him.
All you need to know about the Paris shootings:
>Recent security incidents in France
- ›Dec. 1, 2007 - Gunmen suspected of belonging to Basque separatist group ETA kill two Spanish policemen working undercover in France.
- ›Jan. 11, 2009 - Arsonists use fire bombs to attack a synagogue near Paris and a place of worship in Strasbourg.
- ›Nov. 10, 2010 - Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux announces the arrest of five French nationals suspected of conspiring to launch a terror attack in France.
- ›November 2011 - A firebomb attack guts the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo after it put an image of the Prophet Mohammad on its cover.
- ›March 2012 - Mohamed Merah, an al Qaeda-inspired gunman, kills seven people in three separate shootings in Toulouse. Victims included three soldiers of North African origin, a rabbi and his two young children.
- ›December 2014 - A man shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest) injures 13 by ramming a vehicle into a crowd in the eastern city of Dijon. Prime Minister Manuel Valls says France has "never before faced such a high threat linked to terrorism".