BEIRUT, Lebanon – Muslim rage over caricatures of the prophet Muhammad grew increasingly violent Sunday as thousands of rampaging protesters, undaunted by tear gas and water cannons, torched the Danish mission and ransacked a Christian neighborhood. At least one person reportedly died and about 200 were detained, officials said.
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 in the second day of attacks on its diplomatic outposts in the Middle East.
The Syrian state-run daily newspaper Al-Thawra said Denmark was to blame for the violence because its government had not apologized for the September publication in the Jyllands-Posten of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.
The drawings – including one depicting the prophet wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse – have since been republished in several European and New Zealand newspapers.
Islamic law is interpreted to forbid any depictions of the prophet Muhammad for fear they could lead to idolatry.
In Beirut, a day after violent protests in neighboring Syria, the thousands-strong crowd broke through a cordon of troops and police that had encircled the embassy. Security forces fired tear gas and loosed their weapons into the air to stop the onslaught.
The protesters, armed with stones and sticks, seized fire engines, overturned police vehicles and garbage containers for use as barricades, damaged cars and threw stones at a Maronite Catholic church in the wealthy Ashrafieh area, a Christian neighborhood where the Danish Embassy is located.
Flames and smoke billowed from the 10-story building, which also houses the Austrian Embassy and the residence of Slovakia’s consul.
Witnesses said one protester, apparently overcome by smoke, jumped from a window of the embassy and was rushed unconscious to a hospital. Security officials said he died.
Government and religious leaders in Lebanon, Christian and Muslim, urged unity, and Lebanon’s most senior Shiite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, issued an edict banning violence, saying it “harms Islam and Prophet Muhammad the same as the others (the publishers of the cartoons) did.”
Elsewhere on Sunday:
* More than 4,000 people demonstrated across Afghanistan, and police in one city fired into the air to disperse a group of rowdy protesters. Afghanistan’s president condemned the caricatures but urged Muslims to forgive the insult.
* In Cairo, about 4,000 people protested for almost two hours. Most of the demonstrators were thought to be affiliated with the banned Muslim Brotherhood.
* About 300 ultra-nationalist Turks marched to the Danish consulate in Istanbul and lobbed eggs at the building.
* About 500 Muslims stage a peaceful demonstration in downtown Vienna.
* The Iraqi transport ministry said it would cancel contracts with Danish firms and reject Danish reconstruction money.
* Iran recalled its ambassador to Denmark, joining Syria, Saudi Arabia and Libya.
* Palestinian gunmen defaced the entrance to a French learning center and attacked a man who tried to protect the building.
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