Embassies in Syria set on fire

Damascus: Furious Syrians set fire to the Danish and Norwegian embassies on Saturday as protests over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) showed no signs of abating despite calls for calm.

Chanting "God is Greatest", thousands of protesters stormed the Danish embassy, burned the Danish flag and replaced it with a flag reading "No God but Allah, Mohammad is His Prophet".

The fire badly damaged the building but no one was hurt as the embassy was closed.

Demonstrators also set the Norwegian embassy ablaze. That too was brought under control by firefighters.

Police fired teargas to disperse protesters there and also used water hoses to hold back others from storming the French embassy. Riot police were deployed to protect the US mission.

Denmark has been the focus for Islamic anger because the cartoons that Muslim demonstrators find offensive, first appeared in a Danish daily.

A small Norwegian Christian newspaper was one of the first outside Denmark to publish the cartoons that have now appeared in papers in Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Jordan, Spain, Switzerland, Hungary, New Zealand, Norway and Poland.

Denmark's envoy to Damascus, Ole Egberg Mikkelsen, said he tried to warn Syrian authorities about the protest.

"I personally told the authorities that a big demonstration was brewing and several times during the morning I requested the authorities ensure the necessary protection of the embassy," Mikkelsen told Ritzau news agency.

Denmark advised its citizens to leave Syria and said it was pulling out its diplomats. Mikkelsen said some of the 70 or so Danes there had already left. Norway gave similar advice.

Sweden, which shares its Syrian embassy with Denmark and Chile, was also dragged into the protests. The three Nordic countries protested to Syria for failing to protect diplomats.

"The principle of diplomatic relations is that diplomats can work safely and the fact that this has been broken is extremely serious," Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere told a news conference in Oslo.

Syria's Minister of Islamic Endowments Mohammad Ziyad Al Ayoubi, responsible for all departments looking after Sunni religious affairs, criticised the protests for turning violent.

"We have the right to protest and we have the right to express (our anger) but we do not have the right to exceed the boundaries drawn by Islam in protesting," he said.

UN-Secretary-General Kofi Annan appealed to Muslims to accept the apology offered by a Danish newspaper for publishing the cartoons.

Annan stressed that Europe and the nation of Denmark should not be punished for the act of one organisation.

"I hope the apology will be accepted ... and no attempts will be made in a way to punish a group that has nothing to do with the action of an individual journalist or a newspaper," he said.

The European Union in Brussels urged the Palestinian Authority to protect EU buildings from attacks, saying it "deeply regrets that Europeans who are working to bring a better life to Palestinians should be the subject of such attacks."

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," Shaikh Ahmad Badr-Eddine Hassoun said in remarks carried by state-run Syrian Arab News Agency, or SANA.

The row has already had an economic impact, with Arab countries boycotting Danish goods. In a new twist, Iran said on Saturday it is forming a committee "to review trade ties" with countries that published the cartoons.

Protests continued throughout the Muslim world on Saturday.

Protesters thronged at the Danish embassy in London. Around 500 students of Islamic seminaries protested in Lahore.

Dozens of Palestinian youths tried to storm the office of the European Union in Gaza. Youths also stormed Germany's nearby representative office.

European leaders have called for calm, expressing deep concern at the violence. Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul of Muslim but secular Turkey, a European Union candidate country, called for mutual respect between Muslims and non-Muslims.

In Denmark, a network of moderate Muslims condemned the attack on the Danish embassy and urged restraint.

"This is no longer about the cartoons, the situation is out of control," said group spokesman Syrian-born Naser Khader.