The Danish Embassy in Damascus has been set on fire as a protest over some cartoons got out of hand.
Hundreds of Syrian demonstrators stormed the Danish Embassy in Damascus Saturday and set fire to the building, witnesses said. The demonstrators were protesting offensive caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed that were first published in a Danish newspaper several months ago. Witnesses said the demonstrators set fire to the entire building, which also houses the embassies of Chile and Sweden.
Protesters have been staging sit-ins outside the Danish Embassy in downtown Damascus almost daily since the furor over the drawings broke out last week. Saturday’s protest started out peacefully but as anger escalated, protesters broke through police barriers and torched the building, the witnesses said.
The cartoons, first printed in Denmark and then published elsewhere in Europe, have touched a raw nerve in the Arab and Islamic world, in part because Islamic law is interpreted to forbid any depiction of the Prophet Mohammed, favorable or otherwise.
Amazing.
See all of the images in full size at my Danish Muslim Cartoons page.
Related stories below the fold.
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