Violent clashes over anti-Islam film rage in 3 Asian countries

Protesters vent spleen on US, despite officials flaying the movie

Hundreds of protesters demonstrating against an anti-Islam film torched a press club and a government building in northwest Pakistan on Monday, sparking clashes with police that left at least one person dead. Demonstrations also turned violent outside a US military base in Afghanistan and the US Embassy in Indonesia.

The attacks were the latest in a week-long wave of violence sparked by the low-budget film, which portrays Islam’s Prophet Muhammad as a fraud, a womanizer and a child molester. Many of the protests have targeted US diplomatic posts throughout the Muslim world, including one that killed the US ambassador to Libya, forcing Washington to ramp up security in select countries.

Protesters have directed their anger at the US government even though the film was privately produced and American officials have criticized it for intentionally offending Muslims.

Several hundred demonstrators in Pakistan’s northwest clashed with police on Monday after setting fire to a press club and a government building,  said police official Mukhtar Ahmed. The protesters apparently attacked the press club in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province’s Upper Dir district because they were angry their rally wasn’t getting more coverage, he said.

Police charged the crowd, beating protesters back with batons, Ahmad said. The demonstrators then attacked the office of a senior government official and surrounded a local police station, said Ahmad, who was had locked himself inside with several other officers. One protester died when police and demonstrators exchanged fire and several others were wounded, police official Akhtar Hayat said.

The violence came a day after hundreds of protesters clashed with police when they tried to storm the US Consulate in the southern city of Karachi. One protester was killed and over a dozen were wounded. Pakistanis have also held many peaceful protests against the film, including one in the southwest town of Chaman on Monday attended by around 3,000 students and teachers.

In neighboring Afghanistan, hundreds of people burned cars and threw rocks at a U.S. military base in the capital, Kabul. Many in the crowd shouted “Death to America!” and “Death to those people who have made a film and insulted our prophet.”

Police officers shot into the air to hold back about crowd of about 800 protesters and to prevent them from pushing toward government buildings downtown, said Azizullah, a police officer at the site who, like many Afghans, only goes by one name. More than 20 police officers were slightly injured, most of them hit by rocks, said Gen. Fahim Qaim, the commander of a city quick-reaction police force.

Later in the day, protests broke out in other areas of Kabul, including the main thoroughfare into the city, where demonstrators burned shipping containers and tires. The crowd torched at least one police vehicle before finally dispersing, according Daoud Amin, the deputy police chief for Kabul province.

At a separate protest in front of a mosque in southwest Kabul, several dozen people shouted anti-US slogans and called for President Barack Obama to bring those who have insulted the prophet to justice.

The rallies will continue “until the people who made the film go to trial,” said one of the protesters, Wahidullah Hotak. A number of Afghan religious leaders urged calm. “Our responsibility is to show a peaceful reaction, to hold peaceful protests. Do not harm people, their property or public property,” said Karimullah Saqib, a cleric in Kabul.