World Bulletin/News Desk

Police fired teargas and used water cannon to disperse hundreds of students protesting on Friday against the portrayal of Islam's Prophet Muhammad in the latest edition of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. 

Protesters of the country's largest student movement, Islami Jamiat Talaba, pelted police with stones outside the French consulate in Pakistan's main commercial city, Karachi.

A photographer for French news agency Agence France-Presse is in critical condition after receiving bullet wounds in his chest, according to Dr. Seemi Jamali at Jinnah Hospital in Karachi. 

Several students were taken into custody and the number of police increased to disperse the students.

Several political and religious parties have announced countrywide protests against the magazine, which released its first issue Wednesday since the brutal attack on its offices that killed 12 people last week, with a new cartoon showing the Prophet Muhammad on the cover. 

After the clashes, the protesters, mainly students from a local university, retreated to a nearby area but refused to leave, as police blocked access to the consulate.

It was the first time people's anger over satirical cartoons published by Charlie Hebdo spilled into violence in deeply conservative Pakistan, in the wake of the Jan. 7 attack by Islamist-inspired militants on the weekly in Paris.