Pakistani protesters, police clash as anger over anti-Islamic video boils

PanARMENIAN.Net - Demonstrators clashed with police in the Pakistani city of Peshawar on Friday, September 20 as anger over insults to the Prophet Mohammad boiled over despite calls from political and religious leaders across the Muslim world for peaceful protest, Reuters said.

Western diplomatic missions throughout the Muslim world tightened security, with some closing down on expectation of big protests after Friday prayers.

An anti-Islam film made in America has enraged Muslims and led to days of protests across the Muslim world while cartoons mocking the Prophet Mohammad published in a French magazine on Wednesday were expected to compound the anger.

Pakistan has declared Friday a "Day of Love for the Prophet Mohammad".

Protesters took to the streets of the Pakistani city of Peshawar, an old frontier town on the main road to Afghanistan, and torched a cinema and clashed with riot police who tried to disperse them with teargas.

At least five protesters were hurt, a doctor at the city's main hospital said.

In the capital, Islamabad, about 1,000 stone-throwing protesters clashed with police as they tried to force their way to the U.S. embassy on Thursday and the government shut down mobile phone services in more than a dozen cities as part of security arrangements ahead of protests expected on Friday.

The U.S. embassy in Pakistan has been running television advertisements, one featuring Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, saying the government had nothing to do with the film.

The U.S. and French embassies were closed on Friday in Jakarta, capital of Indonesia, which has the world's biggest Muslim population, and diplomatic missions in the Afghan capital, Kabul, were on lock-down.

Police in Kabul said they had been in contact with religious and community leaders to try to prevent violence.