Three more die in cartoon protests

MUSLIM protests against cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed claimed three more lives yesterday when Afghan police fired at a crowd trying to storm a US military base.

The latest deaths in the town of Qalat brought the total number of Afghans killed in protests this week to 10. Twenty more were injured in yesterday’s clash.

Tens of thousands of Muslims have demonstrated in the Middle East, Asia and Africa over the cartoons, first published in Denmark.

The caricatures, including one showing Mohammed wearing a bomb-shaped turban, have unleashed fury among many Muslims who consider any portrayal of their prophet as blasphemous.

Police in Qalat at first fired in the air to disperse about 600 protesters after they hurled stones at police and set alight a police vehicle, provincial police chief Nasim Mullahkhel said.

Some protesters then tried to attack a nearby US military base and police fired to stop them.

Afghanistan’s top religious council called for an end to the protests, saying people would use the disturbances for purposes of sabotage.

The French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo reprinted cartoons of Mohammed yesterday and published one of its own, further angering Muslims. The front page carried the new cartoon depicting the prophet burying his face in his hands and saying: “It’s hard to be loved by fools.”

President Jacques Chirac condemned “overt provocations” which could inflame passions.

Moderate Muslims, while condemning the cartoons, have expressed fears that radicals are hijacking debate over the boundary between media freedom and religious respect.

Egypt and Saudi Arabia - seen as the most religiously influential countries throughout the Arab world - have not witnessed violent protests. But in Tehran yesterday, demonstrators pelted the British embassy with stones, shouting “Death to Britain”.

EU officials believe much of the violence against European diplomatic missions and citizens in Damascus, Beirut, Tehran and Gaza has been instigated by governments or political groups for their own ends.

The cartoons have appeared in publications in Australia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, France, Fiji, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, the United States, Ukraine and Yemen.