Taliban issue warning over cartoons
Protests ease
Afp, Copenhagen
Muslim protests over cartoons of Prophet Hazrat Mohammad (SM) subsided yesterday but a Taliban commander in Afghanistan warned that 100 militants have enlisted as suicide bombers and Denmark said it feared for the safety of its troops in Iraq. Afghan authorities arrested more than 40 Pakistani workers for inciting violence during a protest on Wednesday against the cartoons in which four people were killed. The men were arrested with their Arab boss in Qalat in southern Zabul province where police opened fire to quell rampaging demonstrators. "The protests were supposed to be peaceful. But we have proof that these men were involved in turning it to violence," provincial spokesman Gulab Shah Alikhil told AFP. The deaths in Qalat took to 11 the toll from five days of protests in Afghanistan against the cartoons, which have appeared in several international newspapers, most of them European. One person has also died in protests in Somalia and one in Lebanon. No further violence was reported Thursday. But Mullah Dadullah, one of the Taliban's most senior military commanders in Afghanistan, warned that 100 militants have enlisted to become suicide bombers in Afghanistan since the appearance of "blasphemous" cartoons. He also said his Islamic extremist group had offered a reward of 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of gold to anyone who killed people responsible for the drawings.
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