15 killed in Nigerian cartoon protests

Riots across Pakistan
In central Pakistan, four people were wounded when shots were fired during another protest over publication of the controversial cartoons.

The shooting occurred as protesters pelted police with stones and tried to block a road in the town of Chiniot in the central province of Punjab, a local police official told Reuters.

He said it was unclear whether police or protesters fired the shots.

Clerics at mosques across Pakistan condemned the caricatures at Friday prayers.

“Give enough power to the Muslim countries and enable them to take revenge,” said Qari Saeed Ullah, a prayer leader in Islamabad.

Five people have been killed in Islamic Pakistan this week during violent demonstrations against the satirical cartoons.

Earlier, a Pakistani cleric was placed under house detention after announcing a $1 million bounty for killing one of the cartoonists who drew the caricatures, as thousands rallied across the country and authorities arrested scores of protesters.

Reward on cartoonist’s head
In Denmark, where the prophet drawings were first published in September, the government said Friday it had temporarily closed its embassy in Pakistan following the violent protests this week.

Pakistan recalled its ambassador to Denmark for “consultations” about the caricatures, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said.

Mohammed Yousaf Qureshi, prayer leader at the historic Mohabat Khan mosque in the conservative northwestern city of Peshawar, announced the mosque and the Jamia Ashrafia religious school he leads would give a $25,000 reward and a car for killing the cartoonist who drew the prophet caricatures — considered blasphemous by Muslims.

CARTOON FURY U.S. cartoonists weigh in on the controversy

He also said a local jewelers’ association would give $1 million, but no representative of the association was available to confirm the offer.

“Whoever has done this despicable and shameful act, he has challenged the honor of Muslims. Whoever will kill this cursed man, he will get $1 million from the association of the jewelers bazaar, 1 million rupees ($16,700) from Masjid Mohabat Khan and 500,000 rupees ($8,350) and a car from Jamia Ashrafia as a reward,” Qureshi told about 1,000 people outside the mosque after Friday prayers.

“This is a unanimous decision by all imams (prayer leaders) of Islam that whoever insults the prophets deserves to be killed and whoever will take this insulting man to his end, will get this prize.”

Qureshi did not name any cartoonist in his announcement and did not appear to be aware that 12 different people had drawn the pictures. The crowd outside the mosque burned a Danish flag and an effigy of the Danish prime minister.

The Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten first printed the prophet drawings by 12 cartoonists in September. The newspaper has since apologized to Muslims for the drawings, one of them showing Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban with an ignited fuse.

Cartoonists go underground
Other Western newspapers, mostly in Europe but also some in the United States, have reprinted the pictures, asserting their news value and the right to freedom of expression.

A spokesman for Jyllands-Posten did not want to comment on Qureshi’s offer.

“We are not going to discuss this with that kind of people,” Tage Clausen said.

The cartoonists have gone underground and lived under police protection since the conflict started escalating last year. The president of the Danish Journalist Union, Mogens Blicher Bjerregaard, who is a spokesman for the cartoonists, would not say whether security surrounding them had been increased.

In Islamabad, former President Clinton criticized the drawings but said Muslims wasted an opportunity to build better ties with the West by mounting violent protests.

“I can tell you most people in the United States deeply respect Islam ... and most people in Europe do,” he said.

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