Protesters clash with police as anger rages

Saturday 22 September 2012

AT least 15 people were killed in Pakistan in clashes during protests over an anti-Islam film.

ATTACK: Muslims burn a picture and mock coffin of US President Barack Obama during protests in Dhaka yesterday, while protesters gather in the streets of Jammu, in Kashmir. Picture: Reuters/ Andrew Biraj

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Aisha Chowdhry islamabad

The deadliest violence was in the southern port city of Karachi, where 12 people were killed and 82 wounded, hospital officials said. Armed demonstrators among a crowd of 15,000 fired on police. The crowd also burned two cinemas and a bank.

In the north-western city of Peshawar, three people died and 61 were hurt in the protests. Police shot at rioters who set fire to two cinemas and the city's chamber of commerce, and damaged shops and vehicles.Near the capital, Islamabad, protesters set fire to a motorway toll booth. On Thursday, about 1000 stone-throwing protesters clashed with police as they tried to get into the US embassy.The film has led to days of protests across the Muslim world, but anger – compounded by cartoons in a French magazine that mocked the Prophet Mohammad – boiled over after Friday prayers yesterday.Political and religious leaders in Muslim countries had appealed for peaceful protest.Egypt's highest Islamic legal official said Muslims should follow Mohammad's example of enduring insults without retaliating. But the call looked unlikely to calm the outrage."An attack upon the Holy Prophet is an attack on the whole 1.5 billion Muslims. Therefore, this is something unacceptable," Pakistani Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf said.Pakistan declared yesterday a "Day of Love for the Prophet Mohammad". Critics of the unpopular government said it was pandering to Islamist parties.The US embassy in Pakistan has been running television adverts, one featuring Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, saying Washington had nothing to do with the film.The protests yesterday had been expected. The Pakistani government shut down mobile phone services in more than a dozen cities and Western diplomatic missions in Muslim countries tightened security.The US and French embassies were closed yesterday in Jakarta, capital of Indonesia, which has the world's biggest Muslim population, and diplomatic missions in the Afghan capital, Kabul, were on lock-down.Police in Kabul said they had been in contact with religious leaders to try to prevent violence."There are some angry demonstrators who will encourage people to violence," senior police officer Mohammad Zahir said. "There will also be Taliban influence in demonstrations too and they may attack the US and other embassies."About 10,000 Islamists gathered in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, to chant anti-US and anti-French slogans. They burned the flags of those countries and an effigy of US President Barack Obama.Western embassies tightened security in Sanaa, fearing the cartoons could lead to more unrest in the Yemeni capital where crowds attacked the US mission last week.In Tunisia, the Islamist-led government decreed a ban on protests against the cartoons. Four people died and almost 30 were wounded last week when protesters incensed by the movie about the Prophet Mohammad stormed the US embassy. Egypt's Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa said on Thursday it showed how polarised the West and the Muslim world had become.Mr Gomaa said Mohammad and his companions had endured "the worst insults from the non-believers of his time". He added: "But his example was always to endure all personal insults and attacks without retaliation of any sort."In Libya, the foreign minister offered a further apology for US ambassador Christopher Stevens's death to visiting US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns. Mr Stevens and three other Americans died in an attack on the US consulate in Benghazi by gunmen protesting against the film.The main body representing Muslims in France appealed for calm as the satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo published cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad this week.Hebdo, whose Paris offices are under police protection, defied critics to rush out more copies of the publication after it sold out.The cartoons have so far provoked relatively little street anger, although about 100 Iranians demonstrated outside the French embassy in Tehran.France confirmed yesterday it would allow no street protests.Interior Minister Manuel Valls said prefects throughout the country had orders to prohibit any protest over the issue and to crack down if the ban was challenged."There will be strictly no exceptions. Demonstrations will be banned and broken up," he said.

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Protesters clash with police as anger rages

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