PENARTH newsagent A B Snell & Son is hoping to sell copies of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo.

The Stanwell Road outlet has ordered 200 copies and expects them to be delivered later this week.

The shop has been "inundated" with requests for copies of the French magazine, with dozens of people calling about availability and more than 100 people on a reservation list.

The magazines had been due to be delivered on Saturday (January 17), but distributors Smiths News said that due to "exceptional demand" for the special edition only a "very limited supply" was allocated to Smiths News.

It warned that "there is no current indication of further copies being available for distribution in the UK", but said it would update customers if the situation changed.

Richard Snell, who owns the family-run business, said he decided to stock the satirical magazine after customers demanded it, and because he believed in freedom of expression

“I’m just reacting to what the people want,” he said.

“Lots of people really want to read it.”

He added that he believed people either wanted to buy it as they were interested in it, or because they wanted to make a statement against terrorism.

“One woman came in to order 10 copies as she wanted to distribute them to a peace movement, whilst a French customer has come in four times to ask if they’d been delivered yet,” he said.

An estimated five million copies of the French weekly magazine, which normally has a print run of 60,000, are being printed after the first run sold out within hours of going on sale.

It comes a week after Islamist gunmen murdered 12 people at the magazine's offices and five others in subsequent attacks in Paris.

The "survivors' issue", as the magazine has dubbed it, has angered some Muslims by depicting the Prophet Muhammad on its cover.

The cover shows a cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad weeping while holding a sign saying "I am Charlie", and below the headline "All is forgiven".

"I am Charlie" emerged as a message of support for the magazine following the attack on January 7, which left eight journalists, including its editor, dead in addition to four others.

In a separate attack in Paris two days later, an Islamist gunman killed four Jewish men and took hostages at a kosher shop.

The "survivors' issue" is available in six languages, with proceeds going to victims' families.