Muslim violence spreads over Mohammed cartoons

MUSLIM rage over caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed spilled out of Syria yesterday into neighbouring Lebanon where thousands of protesters torched the Danish mission and ransacked a Christian neighbourhood.

Muslim clerics denounced the violence, with some wading into the mobs trying to stop them. Copenhagen ordered Danes to leave the country or stay indoors on the second day of Middle East violence against its diplomatic outposts.

The Danish and Norwegian missions in Syria were set ablaze yesterday in what until then had been the most violent in a string of angry demonstrations across the Muslim world.

The trouble threatened to rile sectarian tensions in Beirut when protesters began stoning St Maroun Church, one of the city's main Maronite Catholic churches, and property in Ashrafieh, a Christian area. Sectarian tension is a sensitive issue in Lebanon, where Muslims and Christians fought a 15-year civil war until 1990.

Lebanon's Interior Minister Hassan Sabei resigned hours after violent mobs attacked and burned the Danish Embassy in Beirut.

Mr Sabei made the announcement as he left an emergency cabinet meeting called by President Emile Lahoud.

The Syrian state-run daily newspaper Al-Thawra said Denmark was to blame because its government had not apologised for the September publication of the caricatures in the Jyllands-Posten.

The drawings have been republished in several European newspapers as a statement on behalf of a free press.

The growing Muslim outrage and increasingly violent protests found their way onto the agenda of a German meeting of the world's top defence officials, who appealed for calm and urged respect for both religious and press freedoms.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told participants: "We must prevent a situation arising where people think we must choose between these two liberties"

But Iran's Foreign Ministry announced Tehran had recalled its ambassador to Denmark, joining Syria, Saudi Arabia and Libya in pulling their diplomatic representatives.

In the Afghan city of Mihtarlam, 3,000 demonstrators burned a Danish flag and demanded that the editors at the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten be prosecuted for blasphemy.

Some 1,000 people tried to march to the offices of the United Nations and other aid groups in Fayzabad. Police fired shots into the air to disperse them, officials said. No one was hurt.

In the West Bank city of Ramallah, students in uniform age 13 and even younger carried protest posters and shouted: "No to offending our prophet."

In Iraq, about 1,000 Sunni Muslims demonstrated outside a mosque in the insurgent hotbed of Ramadi.

The Iraqi transport ministry said it would cancel contracts with Danish firms and reject any offers of Danish reconstruction money.

In Beirut, the protest spiralled out of control for several hours and spread to the Christian neighbourhood where the Danish Embassy was located. Security forces had fired tear gas into the crowds and loosed their weapons into the air in a desperate but failed attempt to stop the onslaught.

Officials said 30 people were injured, half of them members of the security forces.

Grand Mufti Mohammed Rashid Kabbani, spiritual leader of Lebanon's Sunni Muslims, denounced the violence, saying there were infiltrators among the protesters who's aim was to "harm the stability of Lebanon".

There were some in the group trying to "exploit" the protests and "distort the image of Islam".