GERMANY: A German newspaper yesterday published a cartoon depicting the Iranian football team dressed as suicide bombers, opening up a new front in the row over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.
Iran immediately demanded an apology from Der Tagesspiegel, which showed four Iranian players at this summer's World Cup in Germany with explosives attached to their chests. A caption read: "Why the German army should definitely be used during the football World Cup."
The general secretary of Iran's sports press association yesterday described the cartoon as a "black joke". The Iranian embassy in Berlin called for an apology, saying the cartoon was "an immoral act".
The row came amid violent protests in Pakistan and Iran over the original Danish cartoons which left two people dead and at least a dozen injured. Protesters ransacked western businesses and stormed a diplomatic quarter in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. About 1,000 students broke through checkpoints to reach the diplomatic enclave. Police used tear gas to repel the crowd.
Police made baton charges in Lahore where thousands of demonstrators ransacked McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets, and destroyed the offices of a Norwegian telecoms company. Businesses closed and the city was paralysed as rioters damaged at least 200 cars and a large portrait of the president, Gen Pervez Musharraf.
A security guard shot and killed two protesters who tried to force their way into a bank in Lahore, the interior minister, Aftab Khan Sherpao, said.
In Iran scores of protesters hurled petrol bombs and stones at the British and German embassies in Tehran.
Yesterday's row over the football cartoon comes at a time when relations between Germany and Iran have sunk to a new low. Iran has already compared Germany's Christian Democrat leader, Angela Merkel, to Hitler after she hinted her government may be prepared to support military action against Iran.
Malte Lehming, comment editor at Der Tagesspiegel, said yesterday the caricature was meant for "a German audience". Asked whether it had been unwise to print it, he said: "The problem is where do you draw the line? Cartoons have to be satirical and mean. We are very sorry if we have hurt the feelings of any Iranians. But we have not apologised."
The cartoonist, Klaus Stuttmann, received three death threats and is in hiding, the paper said.