AFGHANISTAN: Three people were killed in Afghanistan yesterday in fresh protests against cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, while the United States accused Iran and Syria of deliberately stoking Muslim anger.
The deaths in the town of Qalat, in the southern province of Zabul, brought the total number of Afghans killed in protests this week to 10. Twenty 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, then Norway and several other European countries. US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice accused Iran and Syria, both at loggerheads with the West, of inciting violence over the cartoons for their own purposes.
Afghan police at first fired in the air to disperse about 600 protesters in Qalat after they threw stones at police and set fire to 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, he added.
"So far, we've received three dead bodies and 20 wounded," said Zahir Shah, a doctor at Qalat's main hospital.
In Tehran, demonstrators pelted the British embassy with stones yesterday, shouting "Death to Britain" and "We are willing to sacrifice our lives for the Prophet Muhammad".
Another group of 100 demonstrators chanted slogans outside the Danish embassy in Tehran.
EU officials and diplomats believe much of the violence against European diplomatic missions and citizens in Damascus, Beirut, Tehran and Gaza has not been spontaneous but instigated by governments or political groups for their own ends.
"Anyone who knows Syria knows that people don't just go downtown and demonstrate without some official nod or wink," one EU official said.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana plans to travel to Arab and Muslim countries in an attempt to calm anger over the publication of the cartoons in Europe.
An internet monitoring group yesterday said suspected Muslim hackers had broken into around 600 Danish websites to post threats and protest against the cartoons.
A cartoonist said the Danish newspaper that first published the caricatures of the prophet had previously turned down cartoons of Jesus as too offensive.
Meanwhile, the editors of the New York Observer alternative newspaper, which drew criticism last year for making light of Pope John Paul's failing health, resigned over what they called their managers' refusal to publish the controversial cartoons. Harry Siegel said that he and three colleagues on the editorial board resigned after being ordered not to print the cartoons.