Syrians torch embassies

2006-02-05 09:02

Damascus, Syria - Thousands of Syrians enraged by caricatures of Islam's revered prophet torched the Danish and Norwegian embassies - the most violent in days of furious protests by Muslims in Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

Faced by the spreading violence and international concern, top religious officials in Syria urged calm on Saturday.

In Gaza, Palestinians marched through the streets, storming European buildings and burning German and Danish flags.

Protesters smashed the windows of the German cultural centre and threw stones at the European Commission building, police said.

Iraqis rallying by the hundreds demanded an apology from the European Union, and the leader of the Palestinian group Hamas called the cartoons "an unforgivable insult" that merited punishment by death.

Pakistan summoned the envoys of nine Western countries in protest, and even Europeans took to the streets in Denmark and Britain to voice their anger.

At the heart of the protest: 12 caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad first published in Denmark's Jyllands-Posten in September and reprinted in European media in the past week.

The cartoons have touched a raw nerve in part because Islamic law is interpreted to forbid any depiction of the Prophet Muhammad. Aggravating the affront: one caricature of Muhammad wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse.

Denmark's Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen has said he cannot apologize for his country's free press. But other European leaders tried on Saturday to calm the storm.

Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel said she understood Muslims were hurt - though it did not justify violence.

"Freedom of the press is one of the great assets as a component of democracy, but we also have the value and asset of freedom of religion," Merkel told an international security conference in Munich, Germany.

The Vatican deplored the violence, but said certain provocative forms of criticism were unacceptable.

"The right to freedom of thought and expression ... cannot entail the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers," the Vatican said in its first statement on the controversy.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who has criticized European media for reprinting the caricatures, said there was no justification for the violence. "We stand in solidarity with the Danish government in its call for calm and its demand that all its diplomats and diplomatic premises are properly protected. It's incumbent on the Syrian authorities to act in this regard."

Poland's Foreign Minister Stefan Meller said he would tell Muslim ambassadors next week "how sorry he feels that these caricatures have been reprinted," his spokesman said.

But Denmark and Norway did not wait for more violence. With their embassies in Damascus up in flames, the foreign ministries advised their citizens to leave Syria without delay.

"It's horrible and totally unacceptable," Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller said on Danish public television Saturday.

No diplomats were injured, officials said. But Swedish Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds - whose country, along with Chile, has an embassy in the same building - said she would lodge a formal protest over the lack of security.

Amid the furore, Syria's Grand Mufti urged calm, noting the demonstration had started in a "nice and disciplined way," but then turned violent because of "some members who do not understand the language of dialogue with others and turned it into destroying and burning of properties."

"We never expressed our anger in such a way, and we believe that dialogue should be done through guidance and teaching, not through killing, harming and burning," Sheik Ahmed Badr-Eddine Hassoun said in remarks carried by state-run Syrian Arab News Agency, or Sana.

The country's minister of religious affairs, Mohammed Ziyad al-Ayoubi, also criticized what had happened, saying: "it is our right to demonstrate and express our anger over what some European newspapers published, but it is not our right to cross the lines that were drawn by Islam."

The demonstrations in Damascus began peacefully with protesters gathering outside the building housing the Danish Embassy. But they began throwing stones and eventually broke through police barricades. Some scrambled up concrete barriers protecting the embassy, climbed into the building and set a fire.

"With our blood and souls we defend you, O Prophet of God!" the demonstrators chanted. Some replaced Danish flag with a green flag printed with the words: "There is no god but God and Muhammad is the messenger of God."

Demonstrators moved onto the Norwegian Embassy, about 6km away, also setting fire to it before being dispersed by police using tear gas and water cannons. Hundreds of police and troops barricaded the road leading to the French Embassy, but protesters were able to break through briefly before fleeing from the force of water cannons.

- AP