In Middle Eastern and
Asian countries tens of thousands took to the streets after the main weekly
prayers to vent their anger, with little sign that the angry protests, which
began last week, would abate.
Western missions were
shut across the Islamic world, fearing a further escalation of the backlash
over the low-budget film "Innocence of Muslims" that has spread
across the world.
France, where a
magazine this week published a series of cartoons mocking the Prophet Mohammed,
has shut embassies, consulates, cultural centres and schools in 20 Muslim
countries, fearing the fury will spread from US targets.
Pakistan bore the
brunt of the anger Friday, with huge crowds of demonstrators throwing stones
and setting buildings ablaze to denounce the film.
Twelve people were
killed in Karachi, the country's largest city, and five in the northwestern
city of Peshawar, hospital officials said.
Demonstrators defied a
government call for only peaceful rallies on what was declared a national
holiday in honour of Mohammed.
The combined total of
wounded in Karachi, Peshawar and in the capital Islamabad was 229.
Witnesses estimated
that nationwide rallies mobilized more than 45,000, mainly members of
right-wing religious parties and supporters of banned terror groups, although
the numbers were still small in a country of 180 million.
Police fought back
with gunshots and tear gas as arsonists and looters attacked cinemas, banks,
shops and restaurants in Karachi, where outbreaks of political and ethnically
linked violence have killed hundreds this year.
Two cinemas were also
torched and ransacked in the northwestern city of Peshawar, on the edge of
tribal belt strongholds of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
In Karachi, a
policeman who died after being shot when officers used tear gas to disperse a
crowd near the US consulate was among the 12 people killed in the country's
largest city.
The five dead in
Peshawar include the driver for a TV channel, which blamed police for his
death.
Police and
paramilitary troops fired volleys of tear gas to hold off protesters from
breaching barricades that sealed access to Western embassies and consulates.
Overall, 19 people
have been killed in Pakistan during protests over the past week.
In Islamabad gunshots
were fired outside the five-star Serena Hotel and police baton-charged some
8,000 protesters trying to penetrate the heavily guarded diplomatic enclave.
Protestors threw stones, shouting
"Americans are dogs" and "Friends of America are traitors",
while setting fire to an effigy of a nameless American.
Pakistan PM calls for calm
The government had
declared Friday a "day of love for the prophet", but for hours shut
down mobile telephone networks in an apparent bid to prevent extremists from
exploiting the protests to carry out bomb attacks.
"It is our
collective responsibility to protest peacefully without causing harm or damage
to life or property," said Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf as shops,
markets and petrol stations shut en masse.
Washington has warned
citizens not to travel to Pakistan and spent $70,000 to air TV adverts in the
country disassociating the US government from the film, made by extremist
Christians in the United States.
US Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton on Friday reminded governments of their "solemn duty"
to protect diplomatic missions, saying that "they must be safe and
protected places".
In other Muslim
countries, the protests were largely peaceful.
Sunnis and Shiites
took to the streets of Lebanon, and there were also demonstrations in Basra in
south Iraq and in the Yemeni capital Sanaa.
Tunisia banned all
demonstrations amid fears of violence.
In Libya's second city
Benghazi hundreds of radical Salafists protested over the film and cartoons.
The jihadist group Ansar al-Sharia called the demonstration.
But their
demonstration was drowned by tens of thousands rallying against the overweaning
presence of the militias in Benghazi, who called for the Tripoli authorities to
bring the armed groups under control.
Banners paid tribute
to US ambassador Chris Stevens, who was killed along with three other Americans
on September 11 in what US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for the first
time Friday, called "a terrorist attack" on the US mission in
Benghazi.
There were also
demonstrations across Asia in Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan and Bangladesh, where
about 10,000 took to the streets of Dhaka to condemn the film and the French
cartoons.
Around a hundred
Muslim protesters gathered outside the French embassy in London, while in
German cities hundreds held peaceful protests against the US-made film, which
depicts Mohammed as a thuggish sexual deviant.
After French satirical
weekly Charlie Hebdo printed cartoons caricaturing the founder of Islam, the
French government said it would deny requests to protest against the film.
The magazine's editor,
Stephane Charbonnier, mocked those angered by the cartoons as "ridiculous
clowns" and accused the French government of pandering to them by
criticising the magazine for being provocative. Source: Makererean
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