Charlie Hebdo's Morandi Bridge Cartoon Sparks Italian Outrage

Charlie Hebdo's latest cover, depicting the collapsed Morandi Bridge in Genoa with a caricatured African migrant sweeping debris, has ignited fury in Italy. The cartoon, on issue 1361, shows a mangled car and rubble with the captions 'Built by Italians...' and 'Cleaned by migrants...'. Critics, including Deputy Minister Rixi and politician Marco Marsilio, condemned it as offensive. The controversy comes amid Italy's political focus on migration, with Interior Minister Matteo Salvini blocking the Diciotti ship carrying 177 rescued migrants in Catania port. The cartoon critiques Italy's infrastructure neglect and the government's diversion of attention to immigration, echoing Charlie Hebdo's history of provocative satire on tragedies like Aylan Kurdi's death. The magazine, targeted in the 2015 Al-Qaeda attack that killed editor Stéphane Charbonnier and staff, continues its tradition of irreverent commentary.