One of Australia's most well-known cartoonists knew one of the victims in the fatal Paris terrorist attack.
Cathy Wilcox, political cartoonist with Fairfax newspaper The Sydney Morning Herald, said she had met Bernard "Tignous" Verlhac at last year's Cartooning for Peace conference.
"I got to know him quite well, among several other cartoonists," she said.
She joins cartoonists around the world who are horrified at the terrorist attack at the Paris headquarters of satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo, saying it's an attack on freedom.
Twelve people have died after gunmen opened fire at the weekly's offices, killing some of the best-known political satirical cartoonists.
"It's beyond the pale," she told ABC radio on Thursday.
Police confirmed to French media that the dead included the magazines editor and chief cartoonist, Stephane Charbonnier, known as "Charb", and Jean Cabut, or "Cabu", a veteran of several French newspapers and reportedly the highest paid cartoonist in the world.
Two other cartoonists, Georges Wolinski and Verlhac were also reported as having been killed.
Wilcox says political cartooning is a very big part of French life .
"Those line-crossing sorts of drawings - be it because they are sexually risque or politically close to the bone - the French are really proud of that history of freedom of expression.
"They publish stuff that would make us blush and make us look like a very conservative country with our notion of what is acceptable," she said.
She said the Charlie Hebdo magazine had a strong underlying principle of freedom of speech.
As far as her own work, she said there was always going to be people who will be more offended or more upset than others.
"My rule of thumb is not to seek to provoke for its own sake and that it's more important to be saying something in a cartoon which is worthwhile saying, not just to stir up a reaction," she said.
Wilcox said the SMH would not publish a cartoon that was too provocative.
French radio broadcaster Frederic Martel said it was an important newspaper in the French media.
Charlie Hebdo was radical and leftist, he told Macquarie Radio on Thursday.
"It was a newspaper full of many cartoons - especially against Islam, but against Catholics, Jewish, against the gays, against the president and superstars."
"But 12 people have been killed because of their ability to criticise, make fun of religion," he said.
Many cartoonists are using their most powerful weapon - a pen - to express their grief and support to their French colleagues by drawing satirical images.
Since the attack, the "Je suis Charlie" ("I Am Charlie") slogan and hashtag has spread quickly on the internet, with Charlie Hebdo itself replacing its homepage with the phrase printed on a black background.
Clicking on a link revealed translations of the phrase into a number of languages, including Arabic.
Many replaced their social media profile pictures with the slogan, including the US embassy in France for a time. The hashtag #jesuischarlie was used hundreds of thousands of times on Twitter.
Others re-posted old cartoons from Charlie Hebdo, including one showing a jihadist about to decapitate Mohammed.
Media outlets globally tweeted tributes, including a drawing of the four cartoonists and a quote from Charbonnier: "I prefer to die standing than live on my knees."
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