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An observer looks from a broken window of the Temporary International Presence in Hebron, TIPH, offices in Hebron, Wednesday. (AP)
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| By Israel Insider staff and partners February 8, 2006 |
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| Palestinians throw stones at the Temporary International Presence in Hebron. (AP) |
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About 300 Palestinians attacked an international observer mission in the Samarian city of Hebron on Wednesday, throwing stones, smashing windows and trying to set a building on fire to protest Danish cartoons seen as insulting Islam.
Sixty unarmed mission members were in the building at the time, said Gunhild Forselv, a spokeswoman for the Temporary International Presence in Hebron, or TIPH, which serves as a buffer between Israeli settlers and Palestinians in the volatile city.
Eleven Danish members of TIPH left more than a week ago after protests against the Danish cartoons began sweeping across the Muslim world, Forselv said.
The protesters, most of them youths, chased away outnumbered Palestinian police who were stationed outside the mission more than a week ago because of the unrest, Forselv said.
But reinforcements were called in, and police took up position again, pushing back the protesters and regaining control of the situation. By that time, protesters had smashed nearly all of the windows in the mission's three-story office building, and battered three TIPH cars.
Israeli troops arrived at the site after the protest was subdued.
Caricatures first published in Denmark, then reprinted in various European newspapers, showed the Prophet Muhammad - itself an offense because Islamic tradition bars the depiction of the faith's founder. Fueling the outrage was one cartoon showing Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban.
The offending cartoons have touched off protests in the Mideast, Muslim countries in Southeast Asia and Europe, with aggrieved demonstrators issuing death calls and demanding a boycott of Danish and European goods.
Demonstrators attacked the mission's office building and sleeping quarters, smashing windows and trying to storm the structures. "Denmark out of Hebron," and "We will redeem our prophet," the crowd chanted.
At one point, some of the youths forced open the door of the office building and got inside, but TIPH observers waved their batons in the air and drove them away, Forselv said.
The international observer mission in Hebron had decided, in consultation with the Hebron governor, to maintain a low profile, and temporarily canceled regular patrols, which resumed Wednesday, Forselv said. She said they had received assurances earlier from militant groups that the mission wouldn't be attacked, and on Sunday, one militant group issued a public statement of its support for TIPH and pledged to protect it.
TIPH, made up of unarmed observers from Scandinavian and other European countries, was established in 1994 after a Jewish settler killed 29 Palestinians at a Hebron holy site. The observers are supposed to help reduce friction between the city's 500 militant Jewish residents and 170,000 Palestinians.
Protests in Afghanistan and Tehran
International peacekeepers clashed Tuesday with Afghans protesting in a remote northern city against the caricatures, leaving three demonstrators dead and forcing NATO to send in more troops.
Senior Afghan officials said al-Qaida and the Taliban could be exploiting anger over the cartoons to incite violence, which spread to at least six cities in a second day of bloody unrest in Afghanistan.
Violence has escalated sharply in Afghanistan this week, where seven people have died in the past two days. Protests, sometimes involving armed men, have been directed at a slew of foreign and Afghan government targets - fueling suspicions that there's more to the unrest than offense to religious sensitivities.
On Tuesday, protesters armed with assault rifles and grenades attacked the NATO base in the remote northern city of Maymana, which is manned by peacekeepers from Norway, Finland, Latvia and Sweden, local officials said.
Three protesters were shot to death by Afghan and Norwegian forces and 22 others were wounded, said Sayed Aslam Ziaratia, the provincial deputy police chief.
A group of about 50 protesters Tuesday night hurled stones and firebombs at the Norwegian Embassy in the Iranian capital, marking the second straight day of violent protests against European missions over the caricatures' publication.
A small fire outside the embassy was quickly contained but the protest continued, underlining Iranian anger over the drawings on a day that saw the government break all trade ties with Denmark.
Also Tuesday, a Tehran city government newspaper announced a contest for caricatures of the Holocaust, which Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called a "myth."
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, meanwhile, called the prophet drawings a scandal, particularly as they came "from those who champion civilization and free expression."
Meanwhile, the new Saudi ambassador to the United States said Tuesday that he fails to see how freedom of expression could apply to cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that have fueled violence around the world.
"First of all the cartoons are offensive and insulting. For the life of me, I cannot see how such an offensive and insulting cartoon can be considered part of freedom of speech or freedom of the press," Prince Turki bin al-Faisal told The Associated Press.
Turki later lauded Saudi Arabia's ties with the United States before a luncheon audience of about 1,000 people at the World Affairs Council of Dallas-Fort Worth.
The cartoons have sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world. In Denmark, where the cartoons were first published, the Danish prime minister called the protests a global crisis and appealed for calm.
"We'd never think of insulting or offending the prophets of other religions: Jesus, Moses, David, Solomon, Job," Turki said. "We consider them all to be our prophets."
The comments came a day after Turki, a former Saudi intelligence chief, issued a statement with Lord Carey, the former archbishop of Canterbury, as co-chair of a group affiliated with the World Economic Forum "in which both of us called for a reasoned approach to the issue that takes into consideration bringing people of the Muslim faith, the Christian faith and the Jewish faith to better understanding rather than bitter disputes."
AP contributed to this report.
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