By Carlotta Gall, NYTimes.com

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Feb. 6 — Demonstrations against the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad by newspapers in Europe spread across Asia and the Middle East today, turning violent in Afghanistan, where at least four protesters were killed and over a dozen police officers and protesters injured.

The protests gained momentum all over the Muslim world, a day after attacks on the Danish consulate in Lebanon and the Danish and Norwegian Embassies in Damascus, Syria, on Saturday. Muslim clerics led demonstrations in half a dozen cities in Afghanistan, and protesters turned out in Indonesia, India, Thailand, Iran, and even in New Zealand, where local newspapers recently reprinted the offending cartoons.

A teenager died in Somalia in East Africa today when police fired in the air to disperse stone-throwing protesters and set off a stampede. A crowd of about 200 people stoned and broke the windows of the Austrian Embassy in the Iranian capital, Teheran, and tried to hurl gasoline bombs inside, Reuters reported. Police with riot shields prevented further damage and the crowd dissipated after an hour, the agency reported.

The worst violence occurred outside the main American military base at Bagram, north of the Afghan capital, Kabul, as 1,000 protesters clashed with Afghan police officers who guard the outer gate of the base. Three protesters were killed (one dying later in the evening in a hospital) and five were wounded as police struggled to stop the protesters from breaking through the gate, the district chief of Bagram, Kabir Ahmad, said in a telephone interview.

Eight police officers were also injured from stones and missiles thrown by the demonstrators and the police post set on fire.

The protesters torched several buildings belonging to foreign organizations as they marched from the nearby town of Charikar, and burned tires, threw stones and smashed car windows in the bazaar at the entrance to the base, Mr. Ahmad said. Ten people were arrested in Bagram and more detained and taken to Charikar, officials said.

Another protester was killed and two wounded as hundreds of people demonstrated in the town of Mehtarlam, east of Kabul. Two policemen were also injured, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, Yousuf Stanezai, said.

He said the police did not shoot and the protestor was killed by someone firing from the crowd. The Associated Press reported two protesters were killed in Mehtarlam, which would bring the total dead in Afghanistan to five.

Both Afghan officials blamed troublemakers in the crowd for causing the violence. Some 5,000 people, gathered by local clerics, had demonstrated peacefully in Charikar, and only some of them had chosen to march on Bagram, Mr. Ahmad said. Demonstrations in at least five other towns around Afghanistan passed without incident, officials reported.

In Kabul, angry youths carrying sticks threw stones at the Danish, British and French embassies and the United Nations head office and smashed the windows of guardhouses outside offices of foreign organizations. Protesters burned the Danish flag in front of the Danish consulate, and chanted "Death to America" and "Death to Denmark," an eye-witness, Mohammad Reza, said.

The demonstrations came as no surprise in Afghanistan, a deeply religious country and still volatile after so many years of war, and where 19 people died in violence in Afghanistan last year over the reported desecration of the Koran by American guards at Guantánamo Bay. Officials and clerics here have condemned the 12 cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad in different guises that first appeared in the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, in September and have been reprinted in a number of European papers.

President Hamid Karzai said the cartoons were an insult to more than 1 billion Muslims but urged his people to forgive the perpetrators.

"We must have as Muslims the courage to forgive and not make it an issue of dispute between religious or cultures," he said to journalists on Friday. "But that doesn't mean that insulting cartoons about Islam must continue to appear. They must definitely, definitely stop," he said.

Members of Afghanistan's Parliament also condemned the publication of the cartoons, one of which shows Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban, and called for Denmark to prosecute those responsible for printing them.

Iran has withdrawn its ambassador to Denmark and has said it is reviewing trade ties with all the countries where the cartoons have been published. In comments today, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad criticized the argument of freedom of speech employed by European newspapers to justify publication of the cartoons.
"If your newspapers are free why do not they publish anything about the innocence of the Palestinians and protest against the crimes committed by the Zionists?" the semi-official Mehr news agency quoted him as saying, Reuters reported.

More than 200 lawmakers from Iran's 290-seat Parliament also denounced the cartoons. "Apparently, they have not learned their lesson from the miserable author of the Satanic Verses," they said in a statement carried on the official IRNA news agency.

Iran's state radio said the Health Ministry had banned the importation of Danish medical products.

Qatar's Chamber of Commerce said it had halted dealings with Danish and Norwegian delegations, urging Muslim states to do the same. In Bahrain, Parliament formed a committee to contact Arab and Islamic governments to enforce the boycott, Reuters reported.

In Lebanon, a day after violent demonstrations led to the destruction of the Danish mission and the resignation of Lebanon's interior minister, Hassan al-Sabaa, people grappled with the sectarian implications of Sunday's events as politicians called for patience.

Many people expressed their fears that the protests could become a catalyst for renewed sectarian tensions, and many responded by blaming the incident on outsiders, especially Syrians.

Residents of Achrafieh, the predominantly Christian neighborhood that saw the worst of the violence, swept the broken glass off the seats of their cars and drove to work with shattered windshields.

Information Minister Ghazi Aridi apologized to Denmark for the demonstrations on behalf of the Lebanese government, saying that the government "rejected and condemned the acts... that harmed Lebanon's reputation."

Attending a conference in Dubai, Secretary-General Kofi Annan of the United Nations said today that Muslims should accept apologies for the publishing of the cartoons, The A.P. reported. He urged them to "act with calm and dignity, to forgive the wrong they have suffered, and to seek peace rather than conflict."
Reporting for this article was contributed by Abdul Waheed Wafa from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Katherine Zoepf and Hassan M. Fattah from Beirut, Lebanon.
New York Times

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Russell Wilcox is a retired college professor who spends several months in Florida and several months in Rhode Island each year, and whose interests include boating and sailing, political activism, ballroom dancing and bridge. He has an MBA from Harvard, a Computer Systems CAGS from Bryant and a BS from Northeastern. He has worked in industry for EG&G and Texas Instruments, operated his own business with more than 200 employees, and served as Director of the Computer Information Systems Program for Stonehill College. He is a published author of two technical studies, and is the proud father of four children and the proud grandfather of six grandchildren. A holder of two patents in microchip connections and a true product of the melting pot, his father is the son of a Yankee farmer, and his mother the second generation daughter of Italian immigrants who retained their culture, but strove mightily to become Americans, sending four sons to fight against Hitler and Mussolini.