JAKARTA (Reuters) - Muslims across parts of Asia staged noisy but largely peaceful protests on Monday against cartoons published in European newspapers depicting caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad.
While the region escaped much of the violence and arson that accompanied protests in the Middle East, Asian leaders were quick to condemn the cartoons while also calling for calm.
The cartoons were first published in a Danish newspaper in September, but other European newspapers -- saying press freedom was more important than religious taboos -- began reprinting them last week.
Many Muslims consider any images of Mohammad to be blasphemous and offensive.
The worst violence on Monday came in Afghanistan, where one man was shot dead and two others injured in clashes between protesters and police.
Officials in Mehtarlam, Laghman province, said the crowd had been incited by Taliban and al Qaeda operatives and had called for the expulsion of Danish troops from the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Afghanistan.
In the capital Kabul, hundreds of young men, many wielding sticks, marched through the city and eventually found the Danish embassy which they attacked with stones, smashing several windows.
Some of the protesters burned a Danish flag while others tried to smash down the embassy's gate before they moved off to a main U.S military base, where they again threw stones, breaking windows in a guard house.
Police beat protesters with clubs and eventually dispersed them, a witness said.
In Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, protesters in four cities demanded that Denmark apologize for the controversial caricatures.
Police fired warning shots to disperse 300 hardline Muslims when they threw rocks at police during a protest outside the Danish consulate in Indonesia's second largest city Surabaya.
District police chief Anang Iskandar said two policemen were hurt in the clash. Three protesters had been detained, he said, adding the situation was now calm.
In India, shops and businesses were shut and traffic was light in Srinagar, summer capital of the country's only Muslim-majority state, following a strike called by lawyers.
About 300 protesters rallied peacefully in front of the Danish embassy in Thailand's capital as dozens of riot police put up barricades to prevent the crowd getting close to the gate.
Despite protests and boycotts across the Muslim world, the cartoons have now appeared in papers in Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Jordan, Spain, Switzerland, Hungary, New Zealand, Australia, Norway and Poland.
EDITOR QUITS
A Malaysian newspaper editor quit after he embarrassed his Muslim boss by reprinting the controversial cartoons in a bid to illustrate a story about the controversy.
The Sarawak Tribune reprinted the cartoons in its Saturday edition after its editor-on-duty made an "oversight" in looking to illustrate the story, Polit Hamzah, executive director of the paper's publisher, said on Monday.
Malaysia is mainly Muslim and Islam the official religion, but Muslims are a minority in Sarawak -- part of Borneo island, where the biggest single ethnic group is the Iban, a tribal people known as head-hunters over a century ago.
Denmark remained the chief focus of Muslim anger and about 200 protesters from a leading Islamist party rallied near a building housing the Danish embassy in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta.
The embassy is on the 25th floor and the flag-waving demonstrators from the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) were barred from entering the lobby, where unruly protesters from a hardline group rampaged on Friday.
"Denmark must apologize for disgracing the Prophet," yelled the protesters.
There were also small protests by separate groups in three other cities, but no reports of violence.
In Afghanistan, protests were also taking place in Kandahar in the south, Mazar-i-Sharif in the north, Taloqan in the northeast and Charikar town to the north of Kabul, residents of those towns said.
Over 100 lawyers marched in Srinagar in India shouting slogans such as "Death to Denmark" and threw stones at the few vehicles moving in the city. They also burned a red cloth which they said represented a Danish flag.
(Reporting by Sheikh Mushtaq in SRINAGAR, Sayed Salahuddin in KABUL, Mark Bendeich in KUALA LUMPUR, Telly Nathalia in JAKARTA and Noppawan Bunluesilp in BANGKOK)
